What a Nebraska 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.
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It costs $200.00 to file for divorce in Nebraska. 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. Nebraska publishes all fourteen components of this fee and they sum exactly to $200.00 — which not every state in this survey does. Same fee with or without minor children. Two of the fourteen are new. The $26 state docket fee (§ 33-127) and the $10 case management systems software fee (§ 33-107.04) were both created by LB935 (2026), sections 35 and 36, operative 1 July 2026 under section 45; the Legislature’s own committee statement describes each as “a new section of law which creates” the fee, and neither existed before that date. So filing a dissolution in Nebraska costs $36 more than it did on 30 June 2026. We are not printing a figure for what it cost before, because no schedule we have read states one and we do not publish numbers we reached by subtraction. The $50 line is styled a Mediation Fee and § 33-106.03 directs it to the Parenting Act Fund — there is no separately labeled Parenting Act fee. Modification of a decree carries a $65 legal-services/mediation component; a paternity/custody/support complaint totals $209.
The short version5 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Nebraska publishes all fourteen components and they sum exactly to $200.
- If you cannot afford to file — Two forms, DC 6:7.1 and DC 6:7.2, and the statute says the judge shall grant it unless someone objects.
- What we could not find out — There is no Nebraska fee calculator, and the court’s own divorce pages never print the number.
- 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 5
Where the money goes
The short version5 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Nebraska publishes all fourteen components and they sum exactly to $200.
- If you cannot afford to file — Two forms, DC 6:7.1 and DC 6:7.2, and the statute says the judge shall grant it unless someone objects.
- What we could not find out — There is no Nebraska fee calculator, and the court’s own divorce pages never print the number.
- 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 5
Nebraska publishes all fourteen components and they sum exactly to $200.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Docket fee, County § 33-106 | $35.00 |
| State Docket Fee (reduced rate for dissolution; $45 in other civil cases) § 33-127 | $26.00 |
| Mediation fee, to the Parenting Act Fund § 33-106.03 | $50.00 |
| Child abuse prevention fee § 33-106.03 | $25.00 |
| Complete record / Records Management § 33-106 | $15.00 |
| Judges Retirement § 24-703 | $12.00 |
| Case Management Systems § 33-107.04 | $10.00 |
| Automation fee § 33-107.03 | $8.00 |
| Docket fee, Judges Retirement § 33-106.02 | $7.00 |
| Legal services fee § 33-107.01 | $6.25 |
| Indigent Defense fee § 33-156 | $3.00 |
| NSC Education fee § 33-154 | $1.00 |
| Uniform Data Analysis fee § 47-633 | $1.00 |
| Dispute Resolution fee § 33-155 | $0.75 |
All fourteen rows are read off the Nebraska Judicial Branch’s Filing Fees and Court Costs schedule, under District Courts → Civil → 3. Dissolution Fee, which prints the total as $200.00 and is marked Effective 07-01-2026. Each § above links to the statute itself. Two rows are an accounting split rather than two separate charges: § 33-106 imposes a single forty-two-dollar docket fee, and § 33-106.02(2)(a) is what divides it — $7 remitted to the Nebraska Retirement Fund for Judges, the remaining $35 credited to the county. Nobody in Nebraska is billed $35 and $7; they are billed $42, shown here the way the court’s own schedule shows it.
If you cannot afford to file
No extra charge to file — and the court says so in terms
Nebraska does not leave this to inference. Announcing new online-service rates on 8 December 2025, the Supreme Court wrote that fees for the Court Electronic Filing System “will remain unchanged” and that “users will continue to pay only court-required filing fees, with no additional electronic filing charges.” That is a published statement, not an absence of one.
One online-payment surcharge is published, and it is worth knowing why it does not reach you: the Nebraska Judicial Branch Internet Payment System states that “transactions will incur a minimum additional charge of $1.25 for each case or ticket/citation payment.” But that system says of itself that it “is designed for payments required AFTER a case has been decided by a judge” — fines, court-ordered fees, restitution, garnishment. You cannot open a dissolution case through it, so you cannot pay this $200.00 through it, and the $1.25 is not part of what it costs you to file.
A self-represented divorce filer in Nebraska pays at the clerk’s counter. Why you cannot e-file this yourself at all is on the Nebraska kit.
More people qualify than apply. If this section applies to you it is the most useful thing on this page.
Nebraska 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: Court filing fees and costs. Nebraska’s own guide goes further: if the judge grants the request, it says other court costs may be covered by the county, and names service fees, witness fees, mediation, and fees on an appeal of a final order.
- What to ask for: a Request to Proceed Without Payment of Fees — in Nebraska’s own words, in forma pauperis. Two forms do it, and the first has to be notarized: DC 6:7.1, Affidavit and Application to Proceed In Forma Pauperis (Rev. 03/2025; its own “Type of Case” box lists Civil, which it says includes divorce) with instructions DC 6:7.1a, and DC 6:7.2, Order to Proceed In Forma Pauperis with instructions DC 6:7.2a. The court also publishes a plain-English guide to the whole thing, DC 6:4.20.G1 — read it, but do not hand it in: it is a “Things to Know” sheet, and it is the document that names DC 6:7.1 and DC 6:7.2 as the forms you actually file.
- How it works: § 25-2301.02(1) puts the default on your side — an application “shall be granted unless there is an objection” that you have sufficient funds to pay or that you are asserting legal positions which are frivolous or malicious. An objection has to be made within thirty days of your application (or at any time, if the ground is that the application was fraudulent), it has to set out its grounds specifically, and an evidentiary hearing follows — unless the court raises frivolousness on its own motion, in which case it must instead put its reasons in writing on the record. If an objection is sustained you get thirty days to pay and carry on, notwithstanding any limitation period that has run out in the meantime.
- The timing trap: the court’s guide is blunt about it. Until you either pay the fee or the judge grants the waiver, your case is not treated as filed and you do not get a case number. If the request is refused you must pay before anything is filed. Allow for that if a deadline is near.
Read the official sources: Neb. Rev. Stat. § 25-2301.02, § 25-2301.01 (what the affidavit must state), and the court’s guide DC 6:4.20.G1.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- Nebraska publishes no divorce fee calculator, and we checked rather than assumed. The Judicial Branch’s own sitemap lists 4,181 URLs; we enumerated all of them and the only fee document on the whole site is the statewide Filing Fees and Court Costs schedule. There is no tool, which also means no figure on this page can be a tool’s fallback number.
- The court’s own self-help divorce pages never print the number. Both the “simple divorce” walkthroughs say only that “there is a cost to file a Complaint for Dissolution” and that “you will need to pay the filing fee.” So the $200.00 has exactly one official statement of itself — the fee schedule — plus the twelve statutes behind it. There is no second plain-English confirmation from the court, and we would rather tell you that than imply there is.
- The Judicial Branch never announced the 1 July 2026 increase. Its news feed carries a 2017 item on county-court fee changes and a December 2025 item on online-service rates, and nothing at all on LB935. The change is documented in the Legislature’s record, not the court’s. If you were told a different figure by someone working from a pre-July schedule, that is why.
- What a sheriff will charge to serve the papers is not published as a total anywhere. § 33-117 fixes the components, but mileage is charged per trip, so the figure for your county genuinely is a phone call. The Nebraska kit sets out what the statute does fix.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Nebraska’s own agencies publish, not an omission on our part. One housekeeping note, which is not an open question: Nebraska’s judiciary has moved host. supremecourt.nebraska.gov now returns a 301 redirect to nebraskajudicial.gov, so an older citation to the first still resolves, but the second is the address to use.
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 Nebraska 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
Nebraska 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 Nebraska. Every figure is quoted from Nebraska’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Common questions about filing costs in Nebraska
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 Nebraska?
$200 to open the case. What the court actually publishes is $200.00. Every figure on this page is traced to Nebraska’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 Nebraska county?
Yes. Nebraska sets the filing fee statewide, so the figure is the same whichever county you file in. It is $200.
Is the filing fee the whole cost of a divorce in Nebraska?
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 Nebraska?
There is a process for asking the court to waive or defer it, and this page sets out what Nebraska requires. You do not have to have decided anything, or have a lawyer, to ask.
How current is this Nebraska 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.