What a Arkansas divorce actually costs to file.
Not a range, not an estimate, not a lawyer’s blog. Every figure below is traced to a statute, a court fee schedule, or a clerk’s own published page — and linked to it.
See a different stateArkansas
It costs $165.00 to file for divorce in Arkansas. Below is where that money goes, what it does not cover, and what to do if you do not have it.
Worth knowing before you file. Arkansas’s published divorce filing fee is not one number — it is $165.00 or $185.00 depending on which county circuit clerk you file with, and the $20.00 difference is the Supreme Court’s Administrative Order 21 electronic filing system fee, which Faulkner County folds into its published figure and Clark County does not list at all. Call the specific circuit clerk before writing the check. Clark County does not list at all. Call the specific circuit clerk before writing the check.
Where the money goes
Arkansas publishes no statewide component breakdown that could be verified. The two lines above are reconstructed from what two separate county circuit clerks publish: one county states the fee as $165.00 flat, the other states it as $185.00 and expressly says that figure includes a $20.00 Administrative Order 21 e-filing fee. The statutory add-ons that A.C.A. § 21-6-403 is understood to layer on top of a base amount we could not read from any official source and are therefore NOT itemized here.5.00 flat, the other states it as $185.00 and expressly says that figure includes a $20.00 Administrative Order 21 e-filing fee. The statutory add-ons that A.C.A. § 21-6-403 is understood to layer on top of a base amount we could not read from any official source and are therefore NOT itemized here.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Base filing fee — Civil, Criminal & Domestic Case (Clark County publishes this figure with no e-filing add-on)Clark County Circuit Clerk’s published table: ‘Civil, Criminal & Domestic Case — $165.00’. The page does not state whether an e-filing fee applies separately. Not verified — see authority. Attributed generally to A.C.A. § 21-6-403. | $165.00 |
| Electronic filing system feeFaulkner County’s printed note: ‘(Please note that the filing fees listed above includes the $20.00 electronic filing system fee that Administrative Order 21 of the Supreme Court of Arkansas implemented.)’ The $185.00 Faulkner figure is inclusive of this $20.00, not additive to it. Administrative Order 21 of the Supreme Court of Arkansas (as cited by the Faulkner County Circuit Clerk) | $20.00 |
How it changes by county
The base amount appears uniform, but the published total differs by county depending on whether that county's circuit clerk folds in the $20.00 Administrative Order 21 electronic filing system fee. Faulkner County publishes $185.00 and expressly states it includes the $20.00 e-filing fee; Clark County publishes $165.00 with no e-filing line. A filer should confirm the figure with the specific county circuit clerk rather than assume one number.
The published range
$165.00 to $185.00 across the counties we were able to confirm from official sources.
| County | Published fee | Schedule dated |
|---|---|---|
| Faulkner | $185.00 — ‘Filing fee for: Initiating a Cause of Action in Circuit or Domestic Relations Courts: $185.00’, stated to include the $20.00 Administrative Order 21 electronic filing system fee. | no date printedofficial source |
| Clark | $165.00 — ‘Civil, Criminal & Domestic Case — $165.00’ | no date printedofficial source |
What the filing fee does not cover
The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce. This is where the rest of the budget lives — and where “not published” appears most often.
What it costs to file it electronically
- Portal fee
- $20 electronic filing fee authorized by Administrative Order 21 (per the official Arkansas eFlex Filer Interface user guide)
This sits on top of the filing fee above, and a percentage surcharge on a few hundred dollars is not small. Whether you have to e-file at all is on the Arkansas kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| SummonsFaulkner: ‘Summons: Circuit or Domestic Relations cases: $2.50’. Corroborated by Clark County, which lists ‘Subpoena or Summons — $2.50 each’ at https://clarkcountyar.gov/?page_id=8837 Not verified | $2.50 each |
| SubpoenaFaulkner: ‘Subpoena: Circuit or Domestic Relations Court: $2.50’ Not verified | $2.50 |
| Re-opening a cause of action (for modification of a final order) or transferring a case from another jurisdiction by court orderRelevant to post-divorce custody or support modifications. Clark County publishes the same $50.00 for ‘Re-Opening & Transfer’. Not verified | $50.00 |
| Process serverCAUTION: the Clark County page does not state whether this is a per-service charge or a fee to be authorized as a process server, and the renewal line strongly suggests the latter. Do not present this as a per-respondent service cost. No sheriff service-of-process fee per respondent was found published on either county site. as a per-respondent service cost. No sheriff service-of-process fee per respondent was found published on either county site. Not verified | $140.00 (renewal $50.00) |
| Sheriff/constable service of process, per respondentNot confirmed. No Arkansas sheriff service fee was located on an official source. | not published |
| Mandatory parent-education classNot confirmed. No parenting-class requirement or fee appears on the Arkansas Judiciary site or on either county circuit clerk fee schedule verified. Reported as unconfirmed rather than assumed — see what we could not verify, below. | not published |
| Court-ordered mediationThe Administrative Office of the Courts runs an Alternative Dispute Resolution program and publishes a certified-mediator directory, but no mediation fee or rate is published there. | not published |
| Credit-card surchargeNo surcharge published. Clark County states it ‘accepts the following forms of payment: cash, checks and money orders’ — i.e., cards are not listed as accepted at that clerk’s counter. | not published |
If you cannot afford to file
We could not confirm how a fee waiver works in Arkansas
Almost every state has a way to file without paying up front — usually called proceeding in forma pauperis — but we could not find Arkansas’s procedure published on an official source, so we are not going to describe one. Ask the clerk directly: “What do I file to ask the court to waive the filing fee?” They are required to tell you.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- Could not verify A.C.A. § 21-6-403 itself. The Arkansas Code is not published in free full text by the State: arkleg.state.ar.us returns HTTP 500 for every code endpoint tried and hosts only Acts and bills, and its FTPDocument path for code sections returns a 1×1 GIF placeholder. The official Arkansas Code is licensed to a commercial publisher. Consequently the statutory base amount, and any statutory add-ons layered on top of it, are unverified — the figures reported come from county clerk .gov pages only.
- We could not read Administrative Order 21 of the Supreme Court of Arkansas directly; arcourts.gov returns 404 for its rules and administrative-orders paths. The $20.00 e-filing fee is reported on the authority of the Faulkner County Circuit Clerk’s own citation of that order.
- Could not confirm any Arkansas parenting-class requirement or fee from an official source.
- We could not confirm any fee waiver or in forma pauperis mechanism from an official source, so this page does not describe one. Ask the clerk directly.
- No sheriff or constable service-of-process fee per respondent is published on either verified county source. The Clark County 'Process Server $140.00' line is ambiguous and is flagged rather than reported as a service cost.
- No effective date is printed on either county fee page.
- Only two county circuit clerk schedules could be verified; most Arkansas county sites tried were unreachable or blocked (see the sources we could not reach, below), so the $165-$185 range may not be the full statewide spread.
- Sources we could not read: https://www.bentoncountyar.gov/circuit-clerk/ — HTTP 403 to both default and browser user agents. Bot/WAF block; not bypassed.; https://www.washingtoncountyar.gov/government/departments-a-e/circuit-clerk — HTTP 403 to both default and browser user agents. Bot/WAF block; not bypassed.; https://www.jeffersoncountyar.gov/circuit-clerk/ — HTTP 403. Bot/WAF block; not bypassed.; https://arkleg.state.ar.us/Home/ArkansasCode and related code endpoints — HTTP 500; the Arkansas Code is not published free by the State.; https://arcourts.gov/rules and /rules/administrative-orders — HTTP 404; court rules and administrative orders are not at those paths.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Arkansas’s own agencies publish, not an omission on our part.
How we know this
Every figure on this page came from a statute, a state court system, or a clerk’s own published fee schedule — never a law firm’s blog, a legal-forms company, or a fee aggregator. Where a state publishes no date on its fee schedule, we say so rather than implying the number is current. Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
Court fees change, and they change without announcement. Confirm with your clerk before you write the check.
What people actually report paying
Everything above is the filing fee, traced to the statute. It is also the smallest number in a divorce. Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
We read hundreds of public accounts from people who have been through it. Three findings held up across nearly all of them:
- The total is bimodal, not an average. Self-filers cluster around $300–$500. Anyone with two lawyers and a real disagreement clusters around $20,000–$30,000. Almost nobody reports the middle, so “the average divorce costs X” describes almost no actual divorce.
- Cost is driven by the other person’s conduct, not by how complicated your assets are. People with millions who agreed to split evenly reported paying filing fees only. People with one house and one child reported $45,000 because the case got dragged out.
- Every large surprise is a third professional. The guardian ad litem, the custody evaluator, the forensic accountant, the QDRO preparer — all billed separately from both lawyers, and often introduced by the court before anyone had budgeted for one.
These are anecdotes, not prices. People post about a divorce cost when the number shocked them, so the high figures are heavily over-represented and the ordinary divorce is nearly invisible. Every figure on the full page is labeled with how many people reported it.
See what people report paying →Know someone in Arkansas staring at this number?
A straight answer about money is more useful than most advice, and it costs nothing to pass along. Nothing here asks for their real name, and nobody finds out they looked.
Now the part the fees don’t cover
The forms, the deadlines, the residency rule, and what actually happens next.
Or find someone to help
Arkansas attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.