What a Massachusetts 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 stateMassachusetts
It costs $215.00 to file for divorce in Massachusetts. 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. Massachusetts law is unusually explicit that the indigency waiver reaches past the filing fee: M.G.L. c. 261 § 27A defines the waivable ‘normal fees and costs’ to include the c. 262 § 4C surcharge, service of process AND publication of a citation, subpoena and witness fees, and jury trial fees – and under § 27C(2) a facially valid affidavit must be granted by the clerk ‘forthwith without hearing’, so an eligible filer does not have to wait for a judge or appear in court to get the $215 waived.
Where the money goes
The two statutory components ($200 + $15 = $215) are confirmed from primary statute text. Massachusetts does charge a third item, a summons fee, but its amount lives in the Trial Court’s uniform schedule of fees under M.G.L. c. 262 § 4B rather than in the statute, and that schedule is published only on mass.gov, which blocked every request. So the itemisation here is deliberately two components plus an explicit unconfirmed third, not three.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Entry fee, complaint for divorceStatute: ‘for the filing of a complaint for affirmation of marriage, annulment, divorce, $200’. Section 40 is headed ‘Registers of probate and family court; enumeration of fees’. M.G.L. c. 262 § 40 | $200.00 |
| Statutory surcharge on filing feesStatute: ‘Any party entering a complaint, petition or other civil action in any court of the commonwealth, except small claims cases, in which an initial filing fee is payable, and to which a separate docket number is assigned shall pay to the clerk of said court a surcharge of $15 in addition to the fee otherwise required by this chapter.’ Credited to the General Fund. M.G.L. c. 262 § 4C | $15.00 |
| Summons feeNot confirmed as a dollar amount. Section 4B does not set an amount – it delegates to ‘a uniform schedule of fees’ established by the court administrator of the trial court subject to the approval of the Supreme Judicial Court, and that schedule is published on mass.gov, which was unreachable (see the sources we could not reach, below). Section 40 does set ‘$5’ for a CONTEMPT summons specifically, but that is a different instrument and I have not carried that number across to a divorce summons. Left null rather than estimated. M.G.L. c. 262 § 4B (uniform schedule of fees, which expressly covers ‘blank writs and summons’) | not published |
Does it change by county?
No — the fee is the same everywhere in Massachusetts
The fee is set by statewide statute, M.G.L. c. 262 § 40, which fixes ‘the fees of the registers of the probate and family court’ for the whole Commonwealth, and the § 4C surcharge applies ‘in any court of the commonwealth’. The Probate and Family Court is a single statewide department of the Trial Court with divisions by county, not separately fee-setting courts, and M.G.L. c. 262 § 4B requires a UNIFORM schedule of fees approved by the Supreme Judicial Court. No county surcharge is authorized in the statute. I could not cross-check any individual division’s published page because mass.gov was blocked.
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
- $22.00 one-time eFile submission fee on case initiation
- If you pay by card
- 2.89% of the fees total for credit card; $0.25 additional for eCheck
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 Massachusetts kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Service of process by sheriff, per respondentNot confirmed. Not read from an accessible official source. Notably, M.G.L. c. 261 § 27A does confirm that ‘fees and related costs for service of process, including publications of a citation when publication is ordered’ are ‘normal fees and costs’ that an indigency affidavit can waive. Amount not estimated. M.G.L. c. 262 § 8 (sheriffs’ fees) – not read | not published |
| Parenting/parent-education class, if requiredNot confirmed. The Massachusetts Probate and Family Court operates a Parent Education Program under a standing order, but both the standing order and its fee are published on mass.gov, which returned HTTP 403 to every request. I could not confirm the fee, the reduced-fee amount for indigent parties, or the precise scope of the mandate, so all are null. Not estimated. | not published |
| Court-ordered mediationNot confirmed. No rate published on any accessible official source. Not estimated. | not published |
| E-filing or credit-card surchargeNot confirmed. Massachusetts e-filing information is published on mass.gov, which was blocked. Not estimated. | not published |
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.
Massachusetts 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: ‘Indigent’ is defined in M.G.L. c. 261 § 27A as (a) a person receiving public assistance under AFDC, the program of emergency aid for elderly and disabled residents, veterans’ benefits programs, SSI (Title XVI) or Medicaid; or (b) a person whose income after taxes is 125 per cent or less of the current poverty threshold; or (c) a person unable to pay the fees and costs without depriving themselves or their dependents of the necessities of life.
- What it covers: ‘Normal fees and costs’ as defined in M.G.L. c. 261 § 27A, which expressly includes ‘in all civil cases, filing or entry fees, including the surcharges required by section four C of chapter two hundred and sixty-two; fees and related costs for service of process, including publications of a citation when publication is ordered; fees and costs for the issuance or service of a subpoena and witness fees for trial or deposition; jury trial fees; removal fees; costs assessed in a bill of costs’ and ‘in the probate and family court department, fees for an amendment of record.’
- What to ask for: Affidavit of indigency under M.G.L. c. 261 §§ 27A-27G. The form number is published on mass.gov, which was blocked, so no form number is asserted here.
- How it works: Affidavit of indigency filed with the complaint. Under M.G.L. c. 261 § 27C(1), if the affidavit is filed with the initiating paper ‘the clerk shall receive the complaint or other paper for filing and proceed as if all regular filing fees had been paid’, conditionally. Under § 27C(2), if the affidavit is regular and complete on its face and shows indigency, ‘the clerk shall grant such request forthwith without hearing and without the necessity of appearance of any party or counsel.’ If denied, the fees must be paid within five days. Under § 27C(4), on a finding of indigency the court ‘shall not deny any request with respect to normal fees and costs.’
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- The summons fee amount – set by the Trial Court’s uniform schedule under M.G.L. c. 262 § 4B rather than by statute, and published only on mass.gov, which blocked every request. This is why the headline is $215 (the two confirmed statutory components) rather than a three-part total.
- The Probate and Family Court Parent Education Program – whether it is mandatory with minor children, its fee, and the reduced fee for indigent parties. All on mass.gov, all unreachable.
- Any e-filing or credit-card surcharge.
- Sheriff’s fees for service of process.
- Court-ordered mediation rates.
- An effective date – M.G.L. c. 262 §§ 40 and 4C carry no effective date on the malegislature.gov section pages, so effective_date is null rather than inferred.
- Confirmation of the Probate and Family Court’s own published fee list, which would normally be the primary check on the statute.
- Sources we could not read: https://www.mass.gov/ and every mass.gov path tried (including /orgs/probate-and-family-court, /info-details/filing-fees-for-the-probate-and-family-court, /lists/probate-and-family-court-fees, and even /robots.txt) – all; https://courts.mass.gov/ – does not resolve.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Massachusetts’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 Massachusetts 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
Massachusetts attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.