Michigan: legal help you can afford

There is no public defender for a divorce in Michigan, or anywhere else — the right to a free lawyer is a criminal-case right, and a divorce is a civil case. What exists instead is on this page, with the link to each one. Start with the fee waiver and the question of whether your spouse can be made to pay your legal fees, because those two are the ones people never think to ask about.

The five things to try, in this order

Ordered by how much they are worth relative to how hard they are, not alphabetically.

Ask about the filing fee waiver. In Michigan it is called Fee Waiver Request (Waiver/Suspension of Fees and Costs, Affidavit and Order). Form MC 20. Michigan Legal Help also has a ‘Do-It-Yourself Fee Waiver’ guided tool; automatically qualifies those receiving certain public assistance.
Check the statewide legal-aid portal. Michigan Legal Help lists the program that covers your county and what it takes.
Use the court self-help service. Michigan Legal Help Self-Help Centers. Physical Legal Self-Help Centers (often court-based) with computers for legal self-help tools and referrals.
Try the bar referral service. State Bar of Michigan Lawyer Referral Service (LRS) – Modest Means Program. Modest-means clients pay $25 for a referral and up to a 25-minute consultation with a participating attorney; phone (800) 968-0738.

Legal aid in Michigan

Legal aid organizations are funded to serve people under an income threshold, and family cases are one of the areas they most often take. Being turned down by one is not the end of it — the threshold, the caseload and the priorities differ by program and by month.

Organization	Who it covers	Notes
Legal aid providers via Michigan Legal Help (e.g. Lakeshore Legal Aid, Legal Aid of Western Michigan, Legal Services of Eastern Michigan, Legal Services of Northern Michigan, Michigan Advocacy Program, Michigan Indian Legal Services)	statewide, organized by region

Worth knowing about Michigan

Could not independently confirm a specific Michigan attorney-fee-in-divorce statute citation (e.g. MCL 552.13) or a specific University of Michigan/Wayne State family law clinic from sources checked; left null per the no-guessing rule.

The option almost nobody is told about

Limited scope representation. You hire a lawyer for one piece — one hearing, one document, a review of an agreement before you sign it — and do the rest yourself. It costs a fraction of full representation and it puts a lawyer in the two or three moments that actually change the outcome. How it works, and where it is permitted.

What we could not confirm for this state

Listed rather than filled in. Every one of these is something we went looking for and could not stand behind.

the exact attorney-fee statute, which we would not guess at
a law school family law clinic we could confirm is currently running

If you know one of these and we have it wrong or missing, tell us and we will check it and credit the correction.

Compiled 31 August 2026 from each organization’s own site, the state courts and the state bar. Legal aid funding and eligibility change, sometimes mid-year. Always check the link before relying on anything here. Corrections welcome.

Keep reading

The national picture — fee waivers, unbundling, fee awards
The Michigan divorce kit — forms, fees and deadlines
Doing it without a lawyer
Questions to ask a lawyer
What divorce costs
What two households cost

Sources last checked2 September 2026

Page published2 September 2026

What this means. This is when the sources on this page were last read against their originals — statutes, court rules, official schedules — taken from the date this page was built from its sources. It is not the date the page was last edited. Adding a link or fixing a typo does not move it; re-reading the statute does. Law changes without notice, so treat anything time-sensitive as needing a fresh check. Where we get something wrong we publish it at thecusp.app/corrections with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.