What a New Jersey 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 stateNew Jersey
It costs $300.00 to file for divorce in New Jersey. 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. Both spouses pay the $25 parenting workshop fee, not just the filer – the Judiciary lists it twice, once under ‘Plaintiff’s Fees’ and once under ‘Defendant’s Fees’. And responding to a New Jersey divorce is not free: the defendant pays $175 just to file an answer/appearance, so an uncontested-in-name divorce with kids still costs the couple $525 between them.
Where the money goes
New Jersey does publish an itemised breakdown on the Judiciary’s own Divorce self-help page, split into ‘Plaintiff’s Fees’ and ‘Defendant’s Fees’. What I could NOT confirm is the underlying legal authority for each line – see gaps.
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Complaint Fee (plaintiff)Listed on the Judiciary’s Divorce page under ‘Plaintiff’s Fees’ as ‘Complaint Fee $300’. not verified – published by the NJ Judiciary | $300.00 |
| Parenting Workshop Fee (plaintiff) – only if custody or parenting time is requestedThe page states: ‘You must pay this additional fee and attend a parenting program if either party requests custody or parenting time. $25’. not verified – published by the NJ Judiciary as the Parents Education Program fee | $25.00 |
| Filing Fee (defendant’s answer/appearance)Listed under ‘Defendant’s Fees’. Paid by the responding spouse, not the filer. not verified – published by the NJ Judiciary | $175.00 |
| Parenting Workshop Fee (defendant) – only if custody or parenting time is requestedCharged separately to the defendant on the same terms as the plaintiff’s. not verified – published by the NJ Judiciary | $25.00 |
Does it change by county?
No — the fee is the same everywhere in New Jersey
The complaint fee, defendant’s fee and parenting workshop fee are published statewide by the Administrative Office of the Courts and are the same in every county Family Division; all checks are ‘made payable to Treasurer, State of NJ’. County sheriffs do set their own civil-process fees, which is the one genuinely county-variable cost – and it is exactly the one I could not confirm.
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
- No separate e-filing surcharge is published. The published statutory fees are: $300 plaintiff divorce filing fee; $25 parenting workshop fee if custody/parenting time is sought; $175 defendant answer/appearance fee; $25 defendant parenting workshop fee.
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 New Jersey kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Service of process by sheriff, per respondentNot confirmed. New Jersey sheriff civil-process fees are set county by county and the county sheriff site I attempted (Morris County) returned HTTP 403. The Judiciary’s divorce page says only ‘You must serve the other party within 60 days of filing’ without a dollar figure. Reported as null rather than estimated. | not published |
| Parenting/parent-education class, if requiredIt is MANDATORY not simply because there are minor children, but because ‘either party requests custody or parenting time’ – the Judiciary’s own wording. In practice any divorce with minor children where custody or parenting time is in issue triggers it, and BOTH spouses pay $25 each. not verified – the Judiciary calls it the Parenting Workshop / Parents Education Program fee | $25.00 per party |
| Court-ordered mediationNot confirmed on any official NJ Judiciary page I could reach. New Jersey runs Economic Mediation in Family Part matters, but no published fee figure was located, so this is null. | not published |
| E-filing or credit-card surchargeNot confirmed. The Judiciary’s Divorce page mentions electronic filing (‘If filing electronically, upload each document separately’) and mailing with ‘Check or money order for the filing fee’, but publishes no e-filing or card surcharge amount. Null rather than guessed. | 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.
New Jersey 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: ‘Have income at or below 150 percent of the current poverty level (based on the number of people in the household); AND have no more than $2,500 in liquid assets such as cash or bank accounts.’
- What it covers: ‘Court filing and copy fees’. Note the clawback: ‘If you win more than $2,000 in your court case, you will be required to pay back the filing fee for your case.’ Also note fee waiver applications are generally public records.
- What to ask for: Fee Waiver form, CN 11208 (https://www.njcourts.gov/sites/default/files/forms/11208_filingfeewaiver.pdf)
- How it works: File a Fee Waiver form with the required supporting documents at the same time as the case, in any NJ state court (Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Superior Court or Tax Court). You may apply even if you have a lawyer.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- The authority cite we could not verified. njcourts.gov’s Rules of Court pages are JavaScript-rendered and every static PDF path I tried for Part I returned 404, so I never read the text of N.J. Ct. R. 1:43. The NJ Legislature’s statute database (lis.njleg.state.nj.us) is a session-based NXT gateway that could not be queried directly, so I never read N.J.S.A. 2A:34-12.2 either. I have therefore NOT asserted those cites as confirmed – the numbers stand on the Judiciary’s own publication.
- No effective date is printed anywhere on the Judiciary’s Divorce fee page, so effective_date is null. Do not infer one from the page’s URL or last-modified header.
- Sheriff service-of-process fees, mediation costs, and any e-filing/credit-card surcharge are all unconfirmed.
- Sources we could not read: https://www.njcourts.gov/attorneys/fees – HTTP 404 (the path does not exist; there is no consolidated public fee schedule at that URL); https://www.morriscountynj.gov/Departments/Sheriff/Civil-Process – HTTP 403
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what New Jersey’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 New Jersey 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
New Jersey attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.