What a Florida divorce actually costs to file.
Not a range, not an estimate, not a lawyer’s blog. Every figure below is traced to the Florida Statutes or to a county clerk’s own published schedule, and linked to it.
See a different stateFlorida
Almost every site will tell you a Florida divorce costs $408 to file. That number is close enough to be useful and wrong in two ways that matter when you are counting what is in your account this month.
The second thing nobody mentions: $408 is a ceiling, not a price
The statute says the clerk may charge “up to $295” for the base fee and “up to $10.50” for the final judgment charge. It does not say “shall charge.” A clerk is free to charge less, and the posted figure genuinely differs across the state — we found $397.50 – $409.00 across twenty-one counties.
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Seven separate charges, six statutes, two different points in time.
- Why your county might say $409 — Five of the twenty-one counties we checked — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Duval and Brevard — post $409.00. That dollar is real and it is legal.
- The twenty-one counties we checked — Roughly three-quarters of Florida's population lives in these counties.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The parenting course is the one to watch.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- How we know this — Its own executive summary warns that individual clerk schedules may differ from the statewide one.
- What people actually report paying — Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
In this subject 7
Where the money goes
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Seven separate charges, six statutes, two different points in time.
- Why your county might say $409 — Five of the twenty-one counties we checked — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Duval and Brevard — post $409.00. That dollar is real and it is legal.
- The twenty-one counties we checked — Roughly three-quarters of Florida's population lives in these counties.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The parenting course is the one to watch.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- How we know this — Its own executive summary warns that individual clerk schedules may differ from the statewide one.
- What people actually report paying — Here is the other side of it — and a warning about how to read it.
In this subject 7
Seven separate charges, six statutes, two different points in time. Only one of them — the first — is a filing fee in any ordinary sense. The rest are trust funds that ride along on the transaction.
| Charged when you file the petition | Amount |
|---|---|
| Base filing fee, family law (ch. 61)Statute reads “up to $295” — a ceiling, not a fixed amount. Note this is NOT the $395 general civil fee; dissolution has its own lower tier in the same subparagraph. Fla. Stat. § 28.241(1)(a)1.b. | $295.00 |
| Court education fee$3.50 to the Court Education Trust Fund, $0.50 to clerk education. Fla. Stat. § 28.241(1)(a)1.c. | $4.00 |
| Mediation and arbitration fundingLevied on all circuit and county court proceedings, not just divorce. Fla. Stat. § 44.108(1) | $1.00 |
| Child Welfare Training Trust Fund Fla. Stat. § 28.101(1)(a) | $5.00 |
| Domestic Violence Trust FundThe single largest add-on. Charged on every dissolution petition regardless of the facts of the case. Fla. Stat. § 28.101(1)(b) | $55.00 |
| Clerk’s fine and forfeiture fund Fla. Stat. § 28.101(1)(c) | $37.50 |
| Due at filing | $397.50 |
| Charged later, when the judge signs the final judgment | Amount |
|---|---|
| Recording and reporting the final judgment to the Department of HealthTriggered “upon receipt of a final judgment of dissolution of marriage for filing” — months after you file, not on day one. $4.51 to the clerk, $5.99 to the DOH Planning and Evaluation Trust Fund. Fla. Stat. § 28.101(2) | $10.50 |
| Due at final judgment | $10.50 |
| Statutory maximum, both halves | $408.00 |
The $55 line is worth a second look. The Domestic Violence Trust Fund charge is the largest add-on, and it is assessed on every single dissolution petition in Florida regardless of the facts of the case. It is not a finding about you or your marriage. It is how the legislature chose to fund domestic violence services, and divorce filings are the collection point.
Why your county might say $409
The most common question about Florida filing fees, and it has a clean answer.
Five of the twenty-one counties we checked — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Duval and Brevard — post $409.00. That dollar is real and it is legal. It is the Court Docket Fund, authorized by Fla. Stat. § 50.0711(1).
What it buys is oddly specific: Publishing the fact that a civil case was filed — the style of the case and the calendar — in the county’s newspaper of record or on a publicly accessible website. It is a newspaper-era line item that survived into the e-filing era.
The clerk of each county ‘may establish’ this fund. Where it exists it is charged on every circuit civil filing, not just divorces. That is why the $409 counties are $1 higher across their entire circuit civil schedule, not just on dissolution.
How confident are we about this?
Palm Beach publishes the enabling instrument directly (PBC Code § 10-6, the Court Docket Fund Ordinance). For Miami-Dade, Broward, Duval and Brevard the attribution is drawn from the statute plus the arithmetic pattern — every circuit civil line in those four counties runs exactly $1 above the statutory build-up — because since 2004 § 50.0711 vests the election in the clerk directly and requires no published ordinance.
The twenty-one counties we checked
Roughly three-quarters of Florida’s population lives in these counties. Filter to yours. Note the last column especially — only four of the twenty-one print a date on the fee schedule at all, so “current” is doing a lot of unearned work on most of these pages.
| County | Posted filing fee | Summons | Sheriff service | Schedule dated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Miami-Dade Docket fund |
$409.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | No date printed on the cited page, read 17 October 2026Sheriff also lists $44 personal service and $41 out-of-state, per address. clerk fee schedule |
| Broward Docket fund |
$409.00 | $10.00 | not published | no date printedSheriff’s fee not published in a form we could retrieve; sheriff.org failed certificate verification. No figure guessed. clerk fee schedule |
| Palm Beach Docket fund |
$409.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedThe only county of the five that publishes its Court Docket Fund instrument — PBC Code § 10-6, adopted 1992. Sheriff requires a stamped self-addressed envelope with the fee. clerk fee schedule |
| Duval Docket fund |
$409.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedSheriff service drops to $20 when the party served is a city, state or federal agency. Clerk publishes the 3.5% card and $5.00 e-check convenience charges plainly. clerk fee schedule |
| Brevard Docket fund |
$409.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedIts Schedule of Fees Reference Chart also prints $417.00 for a simplified dissolution, higher than the regular figure (read 17 October 2026). Confirmed in two separate clerk documents. Brevard also hosts the statewide clerks’ Distribution Schedule, which is where the $1 Court Docket Fund line is itemized. clerk fee schedule |
| Hillsborough Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedSheriff service is $70 out of state. clerk fee schedule |
| Orange Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedOne of the few clerks that spells out what the number does and does not include: ‘includes the final judgment recording fee (does not include summons).’ Adds a $3.50 credit card surcharge. clerk fee schedule |
| Lee Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedClerk charges $4.00 per Certificate of Mailing when filing through the ePortal. TurboCourt vendor charges of $10.40 and $10.00 are optional and are not clerk fees. clerk fee schedule |
| Volusia Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedAlso prints $411.50 for a simplified dissolution, higher than the regular figure (read 17 October 2026). 3.5% convenience fee online, 7% by phone. clerk fee schedule |
| Marion Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printed3.5% card charge, which the clerk notes it does not receive. clerk fee schedule |
| Escambia Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | not published | Effective January 1, 2023Sheriff’s office publishes no civil process fee amounts — phone only. No figure guessed. clerk fee schedule |
| Alachua Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | not published | Charges current as of January 1, 2026The clearest fee page of the twenty — it cites the statutes inline and prints a current-as-of date. Sheriff publishes no amounts. clerk fee schedule |
| St. Johns Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printed3.5% card convenience fee. Sheriff’s own site publishes no amounts; the $40 comes from the clerk’s civil page. clerk fee schedule |
| Pasco Bundles it |
$408.00 | $17.00 | not published | Revised 070114Two things here are unlike anywhere else in the state. The summons is $17.00, not $10.00 — the clerk adds a $7 preparation charge. And the Sheriff’s Office states plainly that it does not serve civil summons at all, so a Pasco filer must hire a private process server. clerk fee schedule |
| Pinellas Splits it |
$397.50 | $10.00 | not published | no date printedLists the $10.50 final-judgment charge as a separate line rather than folding it in. Sheriff publishes only out-of-state service ($44 substitute, $54 personal); no in-county summons rate is posted. clerk fee schedule |
| Sarasota Splits it |
$397.50 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedNo $408 figure appears anywhere on the clerk’s schedule. Counter-petition is $295.00. clerk fee schedule |
| Manatee Splits it |
$397.50 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedNames the second charge explicitly as a Vital Statistics charge collected at entry of final judgment. Counter-petition $392.50. clerk fee schedule |
| Osceola Splits it |
$397.50 | — | $40.00 | no date printedThe $397.50 and the $10.50 are printed in the clerk’s answer about a simplified divorce only; no fee for a contested dissolution is printed. Also publishes self-help packet prices: simplified $8.00, uncontested without children $20.00, with children $30.00. Publishes no summons fee. clerk fee schedule |
| Leon Splits it |
$397.50 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedSheriff adds $50 for enforceable writs, $90 total. clerk fee schedule |
| Polk Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | not published | no date printedUntil recently the Polk clerk published no dissolution fee at all. Re-checked 3 October 2026: its fee page now lists “Dissolution of marriage, divorce (including simplified) $408.00” and $10.00 for issuing a summons. The sheriff’s service fee is still not published. clerk fee schedule |
| Seminole Bundles it |
$408.00 | $10.00 | $40.00 | no date printedThe $408.00 sentence sits in the page’s simplified-dissolution section; no separate contested-case amount is printed. Re-checked 3 October 2026: the clerk’s divorce page now states “The filing fee for a Dissolution of Marriage is $408.00 plus $10.00 per summons issued.” Its separate fee schedule page still returns a 404, so the divorce page is the source. Sheriff’s $40 is stamped effective May 13, 2019 and SCSO does not serve out-of-state non-enforceable process. clerk fee schedule |
Three counties are doing something different
Pasco charges $17.00 for a summons, not $10.00 — the clerk adds a $7 preparation charge on top of the statutory issuing fee. More importantly, the Pasco Sheriff’s Office states plainly that it does not serve civil summons at all, so a Pasco filer has to hire a private process server and the usual $40 sheriff line simply does not exist there. Orange is the only clerk of the twenty-one that spells out what its number includes and excludes in plain English. And Polk published no dissolution filing fee anywhere on its site until recently; as of 3 October 2026 its fee page lists $408.00, simplified dissolution included.
What the filing fee does not cover
This is where the real budget lives. The filing fee is the smallest predictable number in a divorce; everything below is either unavoidable or uncapped.
What it costs to file it electronically
- Portal fee
- No fee to use the Portal. Broward Clerk: 'Pursuant to Florida Supreme Court order, fees cannot be charged for E-Filing; only statutorily mandated filing fees can be charged.' Palm Beach Clerk describes the Portal as 'a free service.' Statutory dissolution-of-marriage filing fee in Miami-Dade is stated as $409.
- If you pay by card
- The Portal passes through a bank transaction / credit card processing fee as cost recovery (Broward Clerk). No percentage or dollar amount was stated on any official page we could reach.
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 Florida kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Summons, per respondentNot included in the filing fee anywhere in Florida. Pasco charges $17.00 — the $10 statutory issuing fee plus a $7 preparation charge.Fla. Stat. § 28.241(1)(d) | $10.00 |
| Sheriff service of process, per respondentConfirmed at $40 in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Hillsborough, Orange, Duval, Lee, Volusia, Brevard, Seminole, Sarasota, Manatee, Osceola, Marion, Leon and St. Johns. Pasco’s Sheriff does not serve civil summons at all.Fla. Stat. § 30.231(1)(a) | $40.00 |
| Certified copy of a court recordFla. Stat. § 28.24(4)(a) | $2.00 |
| Court-ordered family mediation, per person per session$60 per person per session where combined household income is under $50,000; $120 where it is $50,000 to $100,000. Only charged if the court actually orders mediation.Fla. Stat. § 44.108(2)(a)-(b) | $60.00 or $120.00 |
| Parent Education and Family Stabilization CourseMandatory for both parents before final judgment if there are minor children. § 61.21(7) says only that ‘a reasonable fee may be charged.’ There is no statutory cap and no clerk in the 21 counties checked publishes a price. § 61.21(3)(b) asks that at least one provider per circuit offer a sliding scale ‘if available.’Fla. Stat. § 61.21 | not capped by statute |
| Credit card convenience chargeSet at the state level for all Florida ePortal users, not by the county. Confirmed published by Duval, Orange, Marion and St. Johns. Duval also lists $5.00 for e-check. Volusia charges 3.5% online and 7% by phone. | 3.5% |
The parenting course is the one to watch. If you have minor children, Florida requires both parents to complete it before final judgment. The statute says only that “a reasonable fee may be charged” — there is no cap, and not one of the twenty-one clerks we checked publishes a price. Ask your circuit for its approved provider list and price it yourself; § 61.21(3)(b) asks that at least one provider per circuit offer a sliding scale, so it is worth asking which one.
If you cannot afford to file
More people qualify than apply. This section is the most useful thing on this page for anyone it applies to.
If you cannot afford this, Florida is required to let you file anyway
This is not a hardship program you have to beg for. Fla. Stat. § 57.081, indigency determined under § 57.082 entitles an indigent party to proceed without prepaying costs, and the clerk determines indigency on a form — not a judge, not a hearing.
- Who qualifies: Presumptively indigent at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines. Rebuttable presumption against you if net equity in assets exceeds $2,500, excluding one vehicle worth up to $5,000.
- What it covers: Filing fees, service of process, certified copies of orders and final judgments, examining fees, and mediation services and fees.
- If you are just over the line: § 57.082(6) provides for a plan at 2% of annual net income.
- What it costs to apply: None for a divorce. The $50 application fee in § 57.082(1)(d) applies only to chapter 39 dependency and termination-of-parental-rights cases, and is frequently misreported as applying to all family filings.
Ask your clerk for the Application for Determination of Civil Indigent Status. Read the statute.
How we know this
Every figure on this page came from one of three places: the text of the Florida Statutes on the Legislature’s own server, a county clerk’s published fee schedule, or the Distribution Schedule of Court-Related Filing Fees, Service Charges, Costs and Fines — the statewide schedule the clerks are required to publish under Fla. Stat. § 28.42. No law firm blogs, no legal-forms companies, no fee aggregators.
One honest note about that statewide schedule: flclerks.com itself blocks automated access; the schedule is hosted on the Brevard clerk’s official site. Its own executive summary warns that individual clerk schedules may differ from the statewide one.
What we could not find out
- Seminole County’s fee schedule page returns a 404; its $408.00 comes from the clerk’s divorce page instead.
- Sheriff service fees are unpublished in Broward, Escambia, Alachua and Pinellas (in-county rate).
- No clerk of the twenty publishes a Parent Education course fee, and the statute sets no cap.
- Only 4 of 21 clerks print a date on their fee schedule. Pasco’s most recent printed revision stamp reads 070114.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Every gap above is a real limit on what Florida’s own agencies publish, not an omission on our part.
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 Florida 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 to the house.
Or find someone to help
Florida 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 Florida. Every figure is quoted from Florida’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
- The divorce kit
- Child custody
- Child support
- Guardians ad litem and child representation
- Travel, custody and relocation
- Alimony
- Property, support and legal fees
- Protective orders
- Changing your name back
- Legal help you can afford
- Verified professionals
- What Divorce Actually Costs
- What Happens to the House in a Florida Divorce
Common questions about filing costs in Florida
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 Florida?
$397.50 to open the case. What the court actually publishes is $397.50 at filing + $10.50 at final judgment ($408.00 total). Every figure on this page is traced to Florida’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 Florida county?
No. Florida’s statutes set the parts of the fee, but each clerk posts its own total. Across the twenty-one counties we checked it runs from $397.50 to $409.00, and most post $408.00. Find your county in the table above.
Is the filing fee the whole cost of a divorce in Florida?
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 Florida?
There is a process for asking the court to waive or defer it, and this page sets out what Florida requires. You do not have to have decided anything, or have a lawyer, to ask.
How current is this Florida 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.
Filing fee by county. We read the dissolution filing fee in 16 Florida counties from each clerk’s own published page or schedule, as printed, with the date printed on it. Florida divorce filing fees by county →