What a Connecticut 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 stateConnecticut
It costs $360.00 to file for divorce in Connecticut. 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. There is no separate $50 Family Division fee — a Connecticut dissolution is charged under the ordinary civil line, at $360.00. The parenting education program is real but is paid to the provider rather than to the court: § 46b-69b(d) caps its total cost at $200.00 per person and then indexes that ceiling annually for inflation, and no one may be excluded from the program for inability to pay.
The short version6 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Connecticut charges a single civil filing fee with no published breakdown; dissolution has no separate line.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- What we could not find out
- How we know this — Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
- What people actually report paying — Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
In this subject 6
Where the money goes
The short version6 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Connecticut charges a single civil filing fee with no published breakdown; dissolution has no separate line.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- What we could not find out
- How we know this — Where nothing is published, we leave it blank.
- What people actually report paying — Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
In this subject 6
Connecticut does not break this down
Connecticut charges a single civil filing fee with no published breakdown; dissolution has no separate line.
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.
Nothing extra to e-file
We looked for a portal fee and a card surcharge in Connecticut and found neither published. That is not the same as a guarantee — clerks can charge for things they do not put on a web page — but there is no extra charge we can point you at. Whether you have to e-file at all is on the Connecticut kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Parenting education program, per person, required whenever a minor child is involvedPaid directly to the contracted provider, not to the court. The Judicial Branch prints the figure: “Participation in a parenting education program costs $150 per person. You must pay the program provider directly. The fee is not paid to the court.” Six hours of class. Judicial Branch, Parenting Education Program — List of Approved Programs (JDP-FM-151, Rev. 3/24) · Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46b-69b | $150.00 |
| State marshal service of process, per person servedA statutory maximum, not a quoted price. § 52-261(a)(2): “not more than fifty dollars for each process served and an additional fee of fifty dollars for the second and each subsequent service of such process,” except $20.00 for each subsequent service at the same address. The marshal may also add mileage at the rate the Department of Administrative Services sets for state employees, plus the town clerk’s fees and any motor-vehicle record search actually paid for. Connecticut does not publish a single all-in figure, so ask the marshal before service. Conn. Gen. Stat. § 52-261(a) | $50.00 maximum per process served, plus mileage |
| Motion to modify a family judgmentPost-judgment, not charged at filing. § 52-259c(a) · Court Fees, item 17 | $180.00 |
| Motion to open or set aside a family judgmentPost-judgment, not charged at filing. § 52-259c · Court Fees, item 16 | $130.00 |
If you cannot afford to file
More people qualify than apply. If this section applies to you it is the most useful thing on this page.
Connecticut has a way to file without paying up front
This is a normal court procedure, not a favor you have to plead for.
- What it covers: Entry fee, filing fees, service of process, and the cost of parenting education.
- What to ask for: JD-FM-75
- How it works: Form JD-FM-75, Application for Waiver of Fees / Appointment of Counsel — Family. Covers the entry fee, filing fees, service of process, AND the parenting education cost.
- Who qualifies: § 52-259b(b) sets a rebuttable presumption that you are indigent and unable to pay if either you receive public assistance — the statute names state-administered general assistance, temporary family assistance, aid to the aged, blind and disabled, supplemental nutrition assistance and Supplemental Security Income — or your “income after taxes, mandatory wage deductions and child care expenses is one hundred twenty-five per cent or less of the federal poverty level.” The court may still find someone above that line unable to pay.
- Who serves the papers then: § 52-259b(a) — where the court finds you indigent it “shall waive such fee or fees and the cost of service of process shall be paid by the state.” You do not pay the marshal out of pocket and claim it back.
- If it is refused: § 52-259b(c) gives you a hearing on request, and § 52-259b(d) a review in the Appellate Court with no filing fee for the petition.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- The per-mile figure a state marshal may add for travel. § 52-261(a) caps the marshal’s fee at $50.00 for each process served and then adds “the fee set by the Department of Administrative Services for state employees for each mile of travel.” The statute points at that rate without stating it, and we could not find the figure published on the Department of Administrative Services’ or the Judicial Branch’s own pages. The Workers’ Compensation Commission publishes a mileage rate under § 31-312(a); that is a different authority from the one this statute points at, so we do not print it here as if it were the marshal’s. Ask the marshal for the mileage before service.
- Today’s indexed ceiling on the parenting education program. § 46b-69b(d) caps the program at $200.00 per person and then says “such amount shall be indexed annually to reflect the rate of inflation.” Connecticut publishes the $200.00 base, and the Judicial Branch publishes the fee actually charged — $150.00 per person — but not the indexed ceiling itself. So the ceiling in force today is higher than $200.00 by an amount the state does not print, and we do not estimate it.
Three things sometimes reported as unknown for Connecticut are not. There is no separate $50 Family Division fee: a dissolution is charged under the general civil line, ‘$360 — 52-259’, item 5 of the Judicial Branch’s own schedule. The parenting education fee is published at $150.00 per person, paid to the provider and not the court. And a state marshal’s fee has a published statutory maximum of $50.00 per process served, in the table above.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. The two items above are real limits on what Connecticut’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.
These are the Connecticut sources behind the figures above, read on 1 October 2026:
- Conn. Gen. Stat. chapter 901, §§ 52-259, 52-259b, 52-259c and 52-261, from the General Assembly’s own server. § 52-259(a) sets the fee: “for each civil cause in the Superior Court, three hundred sixty dollars.” Its history line ends at P.A. 22-26, S. 51, and chapter 901 does not appear in the 2026 Supplement, so the figure is unamended.
- Connecticut Judicial Branch, Court Fees, headed “Revised effective September 21, 2023.” Item 5, “Civil cause (including paternity actions) except as shown below,” is $360 under 52-259. There is no separate dissolution or family entry line anywhere on that schedule.
- Conn. Gen. Stat. § 46b-69b, the parenting education program, including the $200.00 indexed cap and the rule that no one may be excluded for inability to pay.
- Judicial Branch, Parenting Education Program — List of Approved Programs (JDP-FM-151, Rev. 3/24), which prints the $150.00 per person fee and says it is paid to the provider rather than the court.
- Application for Waiver of Fees / Appointment of Counsel — Family (JD-FM-75).
Connecticut publishes no fee calculator for the Superior Court, so there was no tool to test. The only fee calculator the Judicial Branch publishes is for the Probate Court, which is a different court and does not hear divorces.
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 Connecticut 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
Connecticut attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.
The rest of what we have written about Connecticut. Every figure is quoted from Connecticut’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Common questions about filing costs in Connecticut
Short answers to what people ask most about this number. Everything here is drawn from the same sources as the figures above.
How much does it cost to file for divorce in Connecticut?
$360 to open the case. What the court actually publishes is $360.00. Every figure on this page is traced to Connecticut’s own statute or its courts’ published fee schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Is the divorce filing fee the same in every Connecticut county?
Yes. Connecticut sets the filing fee statewide, so the figure is the same whichever county you file in. It is $360.
Is the filing fee the whole cost of a divorce in Connecticut?
No, and it is the small number. The filing fee is what it costs to open the case. Serving the papers, any required parenting class, copies and certifications, an attorney if you use one, and the cost of running two households instead of one are all separate — and together they are many times larger. The sections above set out what this figure does and does not buy.
What if I cannot afford the filing fee in Connecticut?
File Form JD-FM-75, Application for Waiver of Fees / Appointment of Counsel — Family. Under § 52-259b a person who receives public assistance, or whose income after taxes, mandatory wage deductions and child care expenses is 125% or less of the federal poverty level, is presumed unable to pay; the court then waives the fee and the state pays the cost of service of process. You do not have to have decided anything, or have a lawyer, to ask.
How current is this Connecticut figure, and where does it come from?
It is quoted from the court’s own published schedule or the statute that sets it, with the date it was last checked shown on the page. Where a figure could not be confirmed from an official source, this site says so rather than estimating — and where a number could only be reached by arithmetic rather than read off a published schedule, it is left out rather than presented as published. That rule is why some rows here say “not published” instead of carrying a tidy figure, and it is the whole basis on which these pages can be reproduced. The full fifty-state comparison is at thecusp.app/divorce-costs/, free to reproduce under the license published there.
Choosing an agent for a divorce sale is a different problem from choosing one for an ordinary sale: who the agent is allowed to talk to, who has to sign, what happens when one of you will not, and the three separate conflicts of interest that come up when one spouse found the agent first. How to choose a real estate agent for a divorce sale sets out what to ask, and how to check a credential yourself — no divorce credential is official with the National Association of Realtors.
The Cusp receives a referral fee from agents it vets and trains to handle divorce clients.