What a Hawaii 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 stateHawaii
It costs $215.00 to file for divorce in Hawaii. 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. Every component of Hawaii’s divorce filing cost is written into HRS §607-5, but no Hawaii source puts them together into a single number, and the Judiciary’s own website refuses automated access entirely. The $215 and $265 figures on this page are our arithmetic from the statutory line items – not a figure Hawaii publishes. Confirm the total with the clerk.
Where the money goes
PARTIAL RESULT. The statutory line items above were each read directly from the Hawaiʻi State Legislature’s own server (data.capitol.hawaii.gov), which serves the identical Hawaii Revised Statutes files that http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov serves and which is NOT blocked. Every dollar figure above is quoted verbatim from that official text; none is inferred, rounded, or taken from any secondary source. WHAT IS STILL MISSING: the Hawaiʻi Judiciary’s own published filing-fee schedule we could not retrieved (www.courts.state.hi.us and its alias courts.ehawaii.gov both return a hard HTTP 403), so no OFFICIAL SOURCE PRINTS A TOTAL. We therefore publish no headline total rather than a computed one. For convenience only, and expressly flagged as unconfirmed arithmetic on separately published statutory line items rather than as a sourced figure: $100 + $50 + $65 = $215 for a divorce where neither party has a minor child, and $215 + $50 = $265 where either party has a minor child. We are not presenting either number as a confirmed court cost, because no Judiciary source states a total.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Matrimonial action (annulment, divorce, separation, or separate maintenance) — base filing fee, Part IPrinted verbatim in the statutory SCHEDULE under the heading ‘Family court cases’: ‘(15) Matrimonial action (annulment, divorce, separation, or separate maintenance) ………………………. $100’. HRS §607-5(a) directs that the scheduled fees ‘shall be paid to the clerk of the circuit court as costs of court by the person instituting the action or proceeding’. Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-5(b)(15) | $100.00 |
| Administrative costs associated with the processing of all civil filings (judiciary computer system special fund)Part II of the §607-5 schedule, which is prefaced ‘The fees prescribed by this part apply without exception.’ Text: ‘(32) For administrative costs associated with the processing of all civil filings except those brought by the State or any of the various counties or political subdivisions of the State…….. $50.’ HRS §601-3.7(a)(3) confirms §607-5(c)(32) receipts are deposited into the judiciary computer system special fund. Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-5(c)(32) | $50.00 |
| Indigent legal services surcharge (circuit court initial filing)Statute prints: ‘(a) In addition to the costs and fees prescribed in section 607-5, any person in a civil action in the circuit court who is required to pay an initial filing fee shall pay an additional surcharge at the time of the person’s initial filing as follows: (1) Effective January 1, 2012, $50; and (2) Effective January 1, 2014, $65.’ §607-5.7(d)(1) makes complaints and petitions assessable filings. The exclusion list in §607-5.7(e) is small claims, TROs, protective orders, in forma pauperis parties, and State/county parties — divorce is not excluded. APPLICATION CAVEAT: the surcharge is worded for ‘the circuit court’; HRS §571-3 makes the family courts divisions of the circuit courts and §607-5(b)(15) sits inside the §607-5 circuit-court schedule, so it reads as applying to a divorce filing, but this was NOT independently confirmed against a Judiciary-published fee schedule because the Judiciary web property is blocked (see the sources we could not reach, below). Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-5.7(a)(2) | $65.00 |
| Parent education surcharge — matrimonial action where either party has a minor childCONDITIONAL — applies only where either party has a minor child. Statute prints: ‘(a) In addition to the fees prescribed under section 607-5 for a matrimonial action where either party has a minor child, or a family court proceeding under chapter 584A, the court shall collect a surcharge of $50 at the time of filing the initial complaint or petition.’ §607-5.6(c): ‘Surcharges subject to this section shall be limited to one surcharge per case.’ Receipts go to the statutorily created ‘parent education special fund’ (§607-5.6(d)), which §607-5.6(e) says ‘shall be used solely for expenditures related to providing education on all islands for separating parents in matrimonial actions and parties in parentage actions and their minor children.’ This is the statutory funding mechanism for the Judiciary’s parent education programming. Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-5.6(a) | $50.00 |
Does it change by judicial circuit?
No — the fee is the same everywhere in Hawaii
Hawaiʻi organizes its trial courts by judicial CIRCUIT, not by county, and the divorce filing fee is set by statewide statute rather than by any local schedule. HRS §571-3 provides that ‘The family courts shall be divisions of the circuit courts of the State’ and that ‘A family court shall be held at the courthouse in each circuit’. HRS §580-1(a) places exclusive original jurisdiction over divorce in ‘the family court of the circuit in which the applicant is domiciled at the time the application is filed’. The fee schedule in HRS §607-5 is a single statewide schedule with no circuit-specific amounts, and the §607-5.6 and §607-5.7 surcharges are likewise statewide. CAVEAT: this finding covers the STATUTORY fees only. Because the Judiciary’s own website is blocked, it could not be checked whether any individual circuit publishes a local add-on (for example a parent education or mediation program charge) on top of the statutory schedule.
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 Hawaii 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 Hawaii kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Service of process — civil summons (sheriff, deputy sheriff, police officer, serving or levying officer, or independent civil process server)Printed verbatim: ‘For serving civil summons, subpoena, subpoena duces tecum, or any other civil process, except a subpoena or a garnishee summons, for each person served therewith………………..$43 effective July 1, 2015.’ Effective date is printed in the statute itself. Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-8 | $43.00 per person served |
| Service of process — travel/mileageNo mileage allowance where the serving individual uses a State/county-furnished conveyance (§607-8(a)(1)); where more than one person is served on one trip the aggregate charge cannot exceed mileage for the entire trip (§607-8(a)(2)). Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-8(a) | 60 cents per mile for every mile more than one |
| Service of process — return as unserved after due and diligent search where the person to be served has left the StatePrinted as ‘$10 effective July 1, 2015.’ Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-8 | $10.00 |
| Parenting / parent education program (the Judiciary program commonly called ‘Kids First’)WHAT IS CONFIRMED: HRS §607-5.6(a) requires the court to collect a $50 parent education surcharge at the time of filing the initial complaint in a matrimonial action where either party has a minor child, and §607-5.6(e) dedicates that fund solely to educating separating parents and their minor children on all islands. What we could not confirm: the program’s brand name ‘Kids First’ does not appear anywhere in the Hawaii Revised Statutes and we could not verified from any reachable official source; whether ATTENDANCE at the program is MANDATORY for parties with minor children is a Family Court rule/local-order question answerable only from the Hawaiʻi Judiciary website, which is blocked; and whether any tuition is charged on top of the $50 statutory surcharge is likewise unconfirmed. Nothing about mandatory status is asserted here. Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-5.6 | $50.00 surcharge collected at filing (statutory); any separate program tuition or attendance fee is not confirmed |
| Court-ordered mediationConfirms only that mediation exists as a court referral in Hawaiʻi divorce practice — §580-41.5(b) speaks of ‘A mediator who receives a referral or order from a court to conduct mediation’, and §580-41.5(a) bars the court from requiring a party who alleges spousal abuse to participate in any component of any mediation program against that party’s wishes. NO MEDIATION FEE IS PUBLISHED IN THE STATUTE and no fee figure was obtained. Amount deliberately left null. Haw. Rev. Stat. §580-41.5 | not published |
| Credit or debit card convenience feePrinted verbatim: ‘In the event that a credit or debit card is used to pay any charges due and owing to the courts, the judiciary may impose an additional convenience fee on the credit or debit card user. The amount of such convenience fee shall not exceed the amount of the service fee imposed on the judiciary for the subject credit or debit card transaction.’ The statute sets a ceiling, not an amount; the actual rate would be published by the Judiciary, which is blocked. No e-filing surcharge for family court filings was located in statute. Haw. Rev. Stat. §601-17(b) | Not published as a fixed figure; statutorily capped |
| Filing of notice of appeal (in addition to the deposit of appeal costs)Part II item (23). Applies ‘without exception’ per the Part II preamble. §607-5.7(c) adds a further $65 indigent legal services surcharge on an initial filing in the courts of appeal. Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-5(c)(23) | $100.00 |
| Certification under seal of a copy of a pleading or other paper subsequent to initial filing (e.g. a certified copy of the divorce decree)§607-5(c)(26) prints $1 for certification under seal (excluding record on appeal); §607-5(c)(27) prints $2 for exemplification instead of item (26); §607-5(c)(24) prints $2 for search of records by the clerk. The per-page copy charge is set by §92-21, which does NOT print a fixed rate — it requires ‘the reasonable cost of reproducing such copy’, not less than 5 cents per page. No fixed per-page figure is asserted. Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-5(c)(26); copy cost per §607-5(c)(25) and §92-21 | $1.00 certification; copying charged separately |
| Miscellaneous serving, posting, publication and garnishee charges in a circuit/family court casePrinted as: ‘(31) Printing, publishing, or posting notice; service fees; garnishee fees; mileage charges; or other services actually performed…………… Amounts necessary to cover actual costs or disbursements’. Not a fixed figure. Haw. Rev. Stat. §607-5(c)(31) | Amounts necessary to cover actual costs or disbursements |
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.
Hawaii has a way to file without paying up front
This is a normal court procedure, not a favor you have to plead for.
- Who qualifies: No income threshold is prescribed. HRS §607-3 is a purely discretionary standard — ‘special or extraordinary cases’ where the cost ‘may, to the judges, appear onerous’. A case note printed on the §607-3 page records that where payment of $275 in fees ‘well exceeded prisoner petitioner’s meager earnings and “savings” and, thus, would be excessively burdensome, to require the payment of such costs under the circumstances clearly exceeded “the bounds of reason”‘ (113 H. 315, 151 P.3d 796 (2007)), and that in exercising discretion ‘court may consider movants’ estate or their net worth’ (2 H. App. 1, 625 P.2d 378 (1981)). NOTE: the 125%-of-federal-poverty-line definition of ‘indigent person’ that appears in HRS §607-5.7(l) governs eligibility for grant-funded legal services, NOT eligibility for a filing fee waiver — it is deliberately not reported here as a waiver threshold.
- What it covers: Prepayment of ‘costs’ generally, at the judge’s discretion — §607-3 permits waiver of prepayment, or reduction, or remission. An initial waiver of filing fees also switches off the $50 parent education surcharge (§607-5.6(b)(1)) and in forma pauperis status switches off the $65 indigent legal services surcharge (§607-5.7(e)(4)). Whether a waiver reaches the §607-5(c)(32) $50 administrative cost was not confirmed; Part II of the §607-5 schedule is prefaced ‘The fees prescribed by this part apply without exception’, which is in tension with §607-3, and no official source resolving that tension could be retrieved.
- How it works: Judicial waiver of prepayment, reduction, or remission of costs under HRS §607-3, which prints in full: ‘The judges of all the courts of the State shall have discretionary power to waive the prepayment of costs or to reduce or remit costs where, in special or extraordinary cases, the cost of any suit, action, or proceeding may, to the judges, appear onerous.’ The two surcharges are separately addressed: HRS §607-5.6(b)(1) bars the parent education surcharge ‘Against any party who has received an initial waiver of filing fees, except that the court may subsequently determine that a party has the financial ability to pay the surcharge’; HRS §607-5.7(e)(4) bars the indigent legal services surcharge against ‘Any party who has received the court’s permission to proceed in forma pauperis.’
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- Hawaii publishes no combined filing-fee total. The $215 / $265 figures here are our own addition of the statutory line items, each of which is individually confirmed against HRS §607-5 on the Legislature’s server. Treat the total as arithmetic, not as a published fee.
- NO OFFICIAL SOURCE PRINTS A TOTAL DIVORCE FILING FEE. We publish no headline total for that reason alone. The four statutory components are each individually confirmed from official text, but the Hawaiʻi Judiciary’s published fee schedule — the only document that would state what a clerk actually collects — is behind a hard 403. The arithmetic sum ($215 without a minor child, $265 with) is flagged here explicitly as unconfirmed arithmetic, and is deliberately not presented as a headline fee.
- Whether HRS §607-5.7’s $65 indigent legal services surcharge is in fact collected on a family court divorce filing is a reasonable statutory reading (§571-3 makes family courts divisions of the circuit courts; divorce is not in the §607-5.7(e) exclusion list) but is NOT independently confirmed against a Judiciary fee schedule.
- KIDS FIRST: the program name does not appear in the Hawaii Revised Statutes and we could not verified from any reachable official source. Whether attendance is MANDATORY for parties with minor children, and whether any tuition is charged beyond the $50 statutory §607-5.6 surcharge, are both UNCONFIRMED. No mandatory-status claim is made either way.
- Court-ordered mediation fee: not published in statute and not obtainable. HRS §580-41.5 confirms courts do refer/order mediation in divorce proceedings but sets no fee. Amount left null.
- E-filing surcharge: no statutory e-filing fee for family court civil filings was located. HRS §601-3.7(a)(2) refers to fees ‘prescribed by the supreme court by rule of court for electronic document certification, electronic copies of documents, and for providing bulk access to electronic court records’ — those are set by court rule, and the Hawaiʻi court rules are published only on the blocked Judiciary site.
- Credit/debit card convenience fee: HRS §601-17(b) authorizes one and caps it at the Judiciary’s own merchant service fee, but publishes no rate. Actual rate unobtainable.
- Fee waiver FORM NAME and form number could not be confirmed and is left null — Judiciary self-help forms are published only on the blocked host.
- Whether a §607-3 waiver reaches the §607-5(c)(32) $50 administrative cost is unresolved, because Part II of the §607-5 schedule states its fees ‘apply without exception’ while §607-3 gives judges general discretion to waive prepayment of costs.
- Whether any individual judicial circuit publishes a local add-on charge on top of the statewide statutory schedule could not be checked; the circuit family court pages are on the blocked host.
- No non-official substitute was used anywhere in this record. Law-firm pages, LegalZoom, Nolo, DivorceNet, Justia, Wikipedia and fee aggregators all carry Hawaiʻi divorce fee figures and all were excluded under the sourcing rules. Legal Aid Society of Hawaiʻi was likewise not used as a figure source.
- Sources we could not read: https://www.courts.state.hi.us/ — HTTP 403 on every path tried, including the site root, /robots.txt, /legal_references/fees, /self-help/courts/forms/oahu/divorce_forms, and /wp-content/uploads/2024/01/filing_fees.pdf. R; https://courts.ehawaii.gov/ — HTTP 403 on /, /robots.txt, /legal_references/fees and /self-help/courts/forms/oahu/divorce_forms. DNS shows this host resolves to the SAME addresses as http://www.courts.state.hi.us (54.71.50.223 ; https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/ — HTTP 403, including on /hrscurrent/Vol12_Ch0501-0588/. Worked around legitimately: the Legislature’s own alternate host data.capitol.hawaii.gov serves the identical HRS and Session Law f; https://search.capitol.hawaii.gov/ — HTTP 403. The Legislature’s search service is unavailable, which is why testimony and committee reports on the (browsable) data.capitol.hawaii.gov session directories could not be sea; https://web.archive.org/ — connection failure (curl exit, HTTP status 000); the Wayback CDX API also failed with status 000. archive.org itself returns 200 but its availability JSON API returned ‘HTTP 429 Too Many Reques
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Hawaii’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 Hawaii 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
Hawaii attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.