Nebraska: legal help you can afford
There is no public defender for a divorce in Nebraska, 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.
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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 Nebraska it is called In Forma Pauperis (Affidavit and Application to Proceed without Payment of Fees). Form DC 6:7.1 (application); DC 6:7.2 (order); instructions DC 6:7.1a and DC 6:7.2a. Case is not officially filed until the court approves the in forma pauperis request or filing fees are paid.
- Ask whether your spouse can be ordered to pay your lawyer. Court has discretion to award costs and require one spouse to pay sums necessary to enable the other to maintain or defend the dissolution action. (Neb. Rev. Stat. sec. 42-367)
- Check the statewide legal-aid portal. Nebraska Online Legal Self-Help (Nebraska Judicial Branch) lists the program that covers your county and what it takes.
- Use the court self-help service. Nebraska Judicial Branch Self-Represented Litigant Resources – Divorce (No Children). Forms and instructions for filing divorce without an attorney, including in forma pauperis (fee waiver) forms; also references walk-in Self-Help Centers in some county courthouses for low-income self-represented litigants.
- Try the bar referral service. Nebraska State Bar Association ‘Find a Lawyer’ referral service. Separate low-income programs exist through the same bar: Volunteer Lawyers Project and NE Free Legal Answers (ne.freelegalanswers.org); no modest-means panel confirmed specifically for the referral service.
Legal aid in Nebraska
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 of Nebraska | statewide | Publishes a Divorce Handbook; income-qualified civil legal aid. |
Creighton University School of Law – Milton R. Abrahams Legal Clinic. Clinics are free, supervised by faculty, and the students have far more time for your case than a stretched legal aid lawyer does. They take few cases and they follow the academic year, so the answer depends heavily on when you ask.
Worth knowing about Nebraska
- Volunteer Lawyers Project operates Self-Help Centers in several county courthouses statewide but its own direct URL was not independently confirmed.
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.
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 Nebraska divorce kit — forms, fees and deadlines
- Doing it without a lawyer
- Questions to ask a lawyer
- What divorce costs
- What two households cost