What a Nevada 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 stateNevada
It costs $284.00 to $299.00 to file for divorce in Nevada, depending on the county. 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. Nevada’s fee waiver is unusually generous about service: NRS 12.015(2) not only waives court costs but obliges the sheriff to serve process without charge — so an approved indigent filer avoids both the $299 and the service cost. And beware the joint-petition trap: filing jointly is the same $299 up front, but NRS 19.0333 then charges $129 for the first motion to modify or enforce the final order (and $57 for the first opposition), fees that do not attach to cases begun by complaint.
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Nevada is one of the few states that publishes a genuine line-by-line breakdown.
- How it changes by county — Two counties were confirmed and they differ by $15.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- What we could not find out
- 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 7
Where the money goes
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Nevada is one of the few states that publishes a genuine line-by-line breakdown.
- How it changes by county — Two counties were confirmed and they differ by $15.
- What the filing fee does not cover — The filing fee is usually the smallest predictable number in a divorce.
- If you cannot afford to file — More people qualify than apply.
- What we could not find out
- 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 7
Nevada is one of the few states that publishes a genuine line-by-line breakdown. The Eighth Judicial District Court’s ‘OFFICIAL FEES FOR THE EIGHTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT’ PDF itemizes every statute behind the $299.00 divorce fee, and the eleven listed amounts sum exactly to $299.00. Washoe County publishes only the $284.00 total with no breakdown, so no components are listed for Washoe.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Commencement of action, clerk’s basic feeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.013 | $56.00 |
| County clerk feeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.020 | $3.00 |
| Additional fee, commencement of actionLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.030 | $32.00 |
| Court facilities/technology feeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.0302 | $99.00 |
| Additional filing fee (county ordinance)Line item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.0303 & Clark County Code 2.32.080 | $20.00 |
| Legal services / law library feeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.031 | $14.00 |
| Additional county feeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.0312 & Clark County Code 2.32.040(a) | $10.00 |
| Additional feeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.0313 | $10.00 |
| Additional county feeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.0315 & Clark County Code 2.32.010 | $15.00 |
| Divorce/domestic partnership termination surchargeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 19.033(1) | $30.00 |
| Vital statistics / certificate of divorce feeLine item printed in the ‘$299.00 Divorce Complaint or Joint Petition for Divorce’ entry of the Eighth Judicial District Court fee list. Clark County only. NRS 440.605 | $10.00 |
How it changes by county
NRS sets a statutory core (NRS 19.013 $56 base, NRS 19.0302 $99, NRS 19.033(1) $30 divorce surcharge) but several sections — 19.0303, 19.0312, 19.0315, 19.033(3) — expressly let county commissioners add fees by ordinance, and Clark County’s fee list cites Clark County Code 2.32.010, 2.32.030, 2.32.040 and 2.32.080 as authority for four of its eleven line items. Two counties were confirmed and they differ by $15. The other 15 Nevada counties were not checked.
The published range
$284.00–$299.00 across the two counties confirmed across the counties we were able to confirm from official sources.
| County | Published fee | Schedule dated |
|---|---|---|
| Clark (Eighth Judicial District, Las Vegas) | $299.00 | October 1, 2019, in a list reissued 28 August 2026official source |
| Washoe (Second Judicial District, Reno) | $284.00 | September 30, 2025official source |
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 Nevada 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 Nevada kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Answer or First Appearance in Divorce, Annulment or Separate Maintenance Action (Clark County)What the responding spouse pays in Clark County. Breakdown printed on the same PDF. NRS 19.013 ($44), 19.0302 ($99), 19.0303 & CCC 2.32.080 ($20), 19.031 ($14), 19.0312 & CCC 2.32.040(a) ($10), 19.0313 ($10), 19.0315 & CCC 2.32.010 ($15), 19.033(3) & CCC 2.32.030 ($5) | $217.00 |
| Court-ordered mediation — Washoe County Family Services custody mediationSliding scale by gross income and family size. Page is headed ‘Mediation Fees – 2026, Updated February 2026’. $0 at or below 185% of poverty level; $300 at 300% and above. Washoe is the only one of the two counties checked that publishes actual dollar figures. NRS 3.500 (mandatory mediation, counties of 100,000 to 700,000, which includes Washoe); sliding schedule set by the court | $0.00 / $50.00 / $100.00 / $200.00 / $300.00 per party |
| Court-ordered mediation — Clark County Family Mediation CenterNo figure. Mediation is mandatory for contested child custody in Clark County, but the court publishes no dollar figure. Its page reads: ‘Unless waived by the Court, each party is assessed a fee when referred for mediation services. The sliding scale fee is based on each party’s individual income.’ The same page publishes a waiver route: a party currently receiving public assistance is asked to email the office a copy of the eligibility letter, and ‘if approved, the fee for mediation services may be waived.’ EDCR 5.306(c)(1) goes further — parties meeting minimum income requirements ‘shall receive a fee waiver for mediation services upon verification of benefits.’ NRS 3.475(2)(e) requires a sliding schedule based on ability to pay but sets no amount. NRS 3.475; EDCR 5.306 | not published |
| Mandatory parent-education seminar (Clark County)No figure, and the seminar is not mandatory: EDCR 5.305 is permissive. It reads: ‘A court may require the parties to a child custody proceeding to complete a seminar for separating parents during any proceedings involving custody of a child.’ May, not must. The rule prescribes curriculum content and a 45-day deadline but states no fee. No fee for the COPE seminar appears anywhere on clarkcountycourts.us or any Nevada .gov source located. EDCR 5.305 | not published |
| Additional fee for first motion to modify or enforce a final order in an NRS ch. 125 case initiated by joint petitionClark County. The matching first-opposition fee is $57.00. A real trap for couples who file jointly to save money up front. NRS 19.0333 | $129.00 |
| Motion/Opposition to modify or adjust a final order in NRS ch. 125, 125B or 125C casesClark County. NRS 19.0312 & Clark County Code 2.32.040(c) | $25.00 |
| Complaint or Joint Petition for Separate Maintenance (Clark County)$40 less than divorce. NRS 19.013, 19.020, 19.030, 19.0302, 19.0303, 19.031, 19.0312, 19.0313, 19.0315, 19.033(1), 440.605 | $259.00 |
| Annulment (Washoe County)$30 less than the $284.00 divorce/legal separation fee in Washoe. | $254.00 |
| Sheriff/constable service of process per respondentSet by statute, not by the county. NRS 248.275(1) lets the sheriff of each county charge and collect $26 ‘[f]or serving a summons or complaint, or any other process, by which an action or proceeding is commenced … on every defendant’, plus $3 for each mile actually traveled, in going only; mileage on a diligent but unsuccessful attempt is capped at $30. NRS 258.125(1) entitles a constable to the same $26 for serving a summons or any other process in a civil case, and the same $3 a mile. NRS 248.320 and NRS 258.170 bar either officer from charging any fee the chapter does not set, and NRS 248.285 applies the sheriff’s schedule to Carson City. Both sections were last amended in 2025. Neither county court site republishes the figure, and because NRS 248.275 says the sheriff ‘may’ charge it, what a particular sheriff bills is not published. But see the waiver note: under NRS 12.015(2) the sheriff must serve process without charge for an approved indigent litigant. NRS 248.275(1), NRS 258.125(1) | $26.00 + $3.00/mile |
| E-filing or credit-card surchargeNo figure for court filings. Clark County e-files through Odyssey File & Serve; no surcharge is published on the court’s fee list. Separately, the Clark County Clerk (a different office, handling marriage licenses and records) discloses a merchant processing fee of 2% + $1.25 per card transaction charged by NIC Services, LLC — that figure is NOT stated to apply to district court filing fees, so it is not carried over here. Washoe County’s court does disclose that card payments taken through its processor, AllPaid, carry a processing fee retained by the processor, but it publishes no amount and its online payment page accepts only criminal fines and fees, copy requests and mediation fees — not civil filing fees. | 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.
Nevada 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: The court shall allow the person to proceed without costs if they are receiving federal or state public assistance; OR have household net income at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level; OR have expenses for the necessities of life exceeding income; OR have otherwise shown compelling reasons they cannot pay. NRS 12.015(2)(a).
- What it covers: Commencing or defending the action without costs, and filing or issuing any necessary writ, process, pleading or paper without charge. Critically, NRS 12.015(2) also requires that ‘the sheriff or another appropriate public officer within this State shall make personal service of any necessary writ, process, pleading or paper without charge’ for an approved applicant.
- What to ask for: Application to proceed as an indigent litigant (form provided by the court)
- How it works: Application to proceed as an indigent litigant, on a form provided by the court, with a declaration complying with NRS 53.045; or a statement that the applicant is a client of a legal aid program.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- No fee for the Clark County COPE parenting seminar is published on any official source. Worse, the premise that it is mandatory does not hold up: EDCR 5.305 says a court ‘may’ require the seminar, not ‘must’.
- Clark County’s Family Mediation Center fee is a sliding scale with no published dollar figures — only Washoe publishes an actual schedule.
- What a given Nevada sheriff or constable actually bills for service is not published county by county. The statutory figures are set — $26 plus $3 a mile under NRS 248.275(1) and NRS 258.125(1) — but NRS 248.275 says the sheriff ‘may charge and collect’ them, and neither county court site republishes a civil-process schedule.
- Only 2 of Nevada’s 17 county-level filing jurisdictions — its 16 counties, created by NRS 243, plus Carson City, whose sheriff NRS 248.285 treats separately — publish a retrievable divorce filing fee; the statewide range is therefore unknown.
- The Eighth Judicial District Court publishes two different effective dates for the same fee list. The document’s own face is stamped ‘Effective October 1, 2019’, while the Clerk’s Filing page that links it reads ‘(Effective August 28, 2026)’, and the file is named for that date and was last modified on 28 August 2026. We read the reissued file: the $299.00 divorce fee and its eleven statutory components are identical to the earlier version, and the only changes are to probate estate-value bands. We cannot tell which effective date the court intends, so we are not claiming either one.
- Sources we could not read: https://www.clarkcountycourts.us/wp-json/wp/v2/pages — HTTP 401, ‘Access to REST API requests is restricted by Kadence Security settings’. Worked around by crawling the rendered HTML.; https://www.clarkcountycourts.us/departments/family/fee-schedule/ — HTTP 404; no such page exists. The real fee list lives under the Clerk > Filing page.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Nevada’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 Nevada 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
Nevada 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 Nevada. Every figure is quoted from Nevada’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Common questions about filing costs in Nevada
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 Nevada?
$284 – $299 to open the case. What the court actually publishes is $284.00–$299.00 (Clark County/Las Vegas $299.00; Washoe County/Reno $284.00). Every figure on this page is traced to Nevada’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 Nevada county?
No. Nevada sets a base fee and individual counties add their own charges on top, so the total depends on where you file. The published range is $284 – $299. We have not yet mapped it county by county, and this page says so rather than publishing a single number that would be wrong in most of the state.
Is the filing fee the whole cost of a divorce in Nevada?
No, and it is the small number. The filing fee is what it costs to open the case. Serving the papers, any parenting class the court orders, 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 Nevada?
There is a process for asking the court to waive or defer it, and this page sets out what Nevada requires. You do not have to have decided anything, or have a lawyer, to ask.
How current is this Nevada 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.