What a Texas 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 $350.00 to file for divorce in Texas, and up to $401.00 where there are children and the county has a Domestic Relations Office. 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. Among the counties we read, Texas divorce filing fees are close to uniform despite being described as county-set. $350.00 is the base filing fee in each of them, because $213 + $137 of it is fixed by statute with “Local Option: No.” The schedules read for this page agree on that floor and differ only above it: Collin publishes $350.00 with no children-case add-on at all, Harris adds a $15.00 Domestic Relations Fee where there are children ($365.00), Travis prints a separate $15.00 DRO line for cases with children and no combined total, and Dallas, Bexar and Tarrant publish $401.00. A few counties print other amounts or no divorce line, and we have not confirmed them. The money that actually varies is service: getting your spouse served by a constable costs $85.00 in Harris and $80.00 in Dallas, roughly a quarter of the filing fee again, and it is charged per respondent.
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Texas publishes an unusually complete official breakdown.
- How it changes by county — Less than Texas's reputation suggests.
- 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 — Texas publishes an unusually complete official breakdown.
- How it changes by county — Less than Texas's reputation suggests.
- 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
Texas publishes an unusually complete official breakdown. The OCA “District Court Civil Suits and Actions” chart states the total directly: Divorce (Not Involving Children) = $350.00, and Divorce (Involving Children) = “x >= $350.00*” with the footnote “*$350.00 is the fee if your county does not have a Domestic Relations Office.”
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Local Consolidated Civil Fee – any new civil case (family-law cases included)Mandatory, no local option. The county treasurer splits it among ten funds: Appellate Judicial System, Court Facility, Clerk of the Court, Clerk’s Records Management and Preservation, Court Reporter Service, County Law Library, Courthouse Security, Language Access, County Jury, and County Dispute Resolution. Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code § 135.101(a)(1) | $213.00 |
| State Consolidated Civil Fee – any new civil caseMandatory, no local option. Remitted to the Comptroller for the State Judicial Fund, Basic Civil Legal Services Account, Statewide Electronic Filing System Fund, and Judicial and Court Personnel Training Fund. A county may not keep a service fee for collecting it. Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code § 133.151(a)(1) | $137.00 |
| Domestic Relations Office (DRO) Initial Child Support Service Fee – only in divorces involving childrenLocal option. Collectible only if the Commissioners Court has established a Domestic Relations Office and the county has a child-support cooperative agreement with the Title IV-D agency; the administering entity sets the exact amount within the range. § 110.006(b) is what makes the clerk collect it at the counter when the original suit is filed, and § 110.006(c) says it is not a filing fee for the purposes of §§ 110.002 and 110.003. Tex. Fam. Code § 203.005(a)(2); collected under § 110.006(b) | $0.01 to $36.00 |
| Domestic Relations Office (DRO) Initial Operations Fee – only in divorces involving childrenLocal option, only in counties that have established a Domestic Relations Office; the administering entity sets the amount. This is the $15.00 Domestic Relations Fee that Harris adds where there are children ($365.00); Travis prints a separate $15.00 DRO line for cases with children and no combined total. Texas publishes no statewide list of which counties have established a DRO, so we cannot tell you from an official source whether yours has. Tex. Fam. Code § 203.005(a)(1); collected under § 110.006(a) | $0.01 to $15.00 |
How it changes by county
Less than Texas’s reputation suggests. The $350 base is made of two statutory fees, and the OCA chart states “Local Option: No – Fee is mandatory” for both the $213 Local Consolidated Civil Fee and the $137 State Consolidated Civil Fee. $350 is the base in the counties we read. A few counties print other amounts or no divorce line, and we have not confirmed them: Bell prints $228 (undated), Lubbock’s only schedule we found is dated 2022 and prints $377, Williamson lists $350 for “All New Civil / Family Suits” without naming divorce, and Montgomery lists no divorce fee. The county-set part of the divorce FILING fee is the pair of Domestic Relations Office fees, which apply only to divorces involving children and only in counties whose Commissioners Court has created a DRO, capped by statute at $36.00 + $15.00 = $51.00. Tarrant County also itemizes a $15.00 “Family Protection Fee” inside its $401.00 with-children total and cites Tex. Gov’t Code § 51.961 for it — a section the current Government Code does not contain, because S.B. 41 (87th Leg., R.S., 2021) repealed Subchapter M of Chapter 51 effective 1 January 2022. We publish Tarrant’s total as Tarrant publishes it and do not reproduce that component as current law. Real county variation shows up instead in service-of-process fees, which Commissioners Courts set locally.
The published range
$350.00 – $401.00 across the 11 counties we have confirmed from official sources (Bexar, Cameron, Collin, Dallas, Denton, El Paso, Fort Bend, Harris, Hidalgo, Tarrant and Travis; see our county-by-county filing fees page). $350.00 is the floor in every county we read, and the OCA says so in terms: its District Court Civil Suits and Actions chart gives Divorce (Not Involving Children) as a flat $350.00 and footnotes the Divorce (Involving Children) total “x ≥ $350.00” with “*$350.00 is the fee if your county does not have a Domestic Relations Office.”
| County | Published fee | Schedule dated |
|---|---|---|
| Harris | $350.00 divorce no children / $365.00 divorce with children | January 1, 2026 (schedule cover states “Effective January 1, 2026”; footer states “(Updated July 15, 2026)”)official source |
| Dallas | $350.00 divorce no children / $401.00 divorce with children (“Includes DRO fees”) | January 1, 2024 (printed on the schedule: “DISTRICT CIVIL & FAMILY COURT FILING FEES PURSUANT TO SENATE BILL 1612, 88th LEGISLATURE, EFFECTIVE JANUARY 1, 2024”)official source |
| Bexar | $350.00 divorce or annulment w/no children / $401.00 divorce or annulment w/children | no date printedofficial source |
| Tarrant | $350.00 family filing fee w/o children / $401.00 w/children, itemized by the county as $350.00 + a $15.00 “Family Protection Fee” + a $36.00 DRO Initial Child Support Service Fee | January 1, 2026 (schedule states “Effective January 1, 2026” and is stamped “Revised: 01/02/2026” on every page)official source |
| Travis | $350.00 base filing fee, plus a separate $15.00 line for cases with children (“DRO Operation Fund (with children only) $15.00”); the schedule prints no combined with-children total | January 1, 2026 (schedule states “Effective 1/1/2026”)official source |
| Collin | $350.00 for “Divorce / Annulments” and $350.00 for a SAPCR; the schedule publishes no children-case add-on | January 1, 2026 (schedule states “Effective January 1, 2026”)official 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.
E-filing is optional for you, and the card fee is 2.89%
The OCA statewide charts publish no counter surcharge, and neither do five of the six county schedules we read; Travis’s schedule prints a 3% convenience fee on credit card transactions with the clerk. The state’s own e-filing portal also charges one. eFileTexas.gov says that “all electronic submissions with associated court costs are subject to a convenience fee” and prints the figure: “Credit card processing fee: 2.89%”. On a $350.00 filing fee that is $10.12, and $11.59 on $401.00. The state-provided service provider charges no usage fee of its own; the commercial providers set their own on top. The same page says e-filing is mandatory for attorneys and that “while not required, non-attorney filers are encouraged to eFile as well” — so filing on paper at the district clerk’s counter avoids the card fee entirely. Whether you have to e-file at all is on the Texas kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Service of process by sheriff/constable, per respondentSeparate from and on top of the filing fee. Harris County District Clerk, Civil and Family Filing and Service Fees (Effective January 1, 2026, footer “Updated July 15, 2026”) – CITATION $85.00 for service within Harris County. Dallas County: Sheriff & Constable Fees FY 2025 (ordered 9/17/2024) – $80.00 for a “Citation, Summons, Notice, Subpoena, Order, Injunction, or other service not listed” (https://www.dallascounty.org/Assets/uploads/docs/district-clerk/fee-schedules/SHERIFF-CONSTABLE-FEES-FY-2025-with-revisions.pdf); citation by publication/certified mail $65.00 plus costs; a simultaneous TRO and notice in a domestic relations case $95.00. The clerk also charges $8.00 to issue the citation itself (Harris). County civil-process fees set by Commissioners Court; clerk’s issuance fee under Tex. Gov’t Code §§ 51.317(b)(4), 51.318(b)(2) | $80.00 – $85.00 in the counties checked |
| Parent education and family stabilization course, if the court orders oneNot mandatory, and capped. Tex. Fam. Code § 105.009(a) says the court “may order the parties to the suit to attend a parent education and family stabilization course if the court determines that the order is in the best interest of the child” – discretionary, not automatic, and there is no statewide requirement that every divorce with minor children include one. The course runs “at least four hours, but not more than 12 hours” (§ 105.009(c)). On price, § 105.009(k) is explicit: “A party to a suit may not be required to pay more than $100 to attend a course ordered under this section,” the court “may not order the parties to a suit to attend a course under this section if the parties cannot afford to take the course,” and it may instead direct them to a course offered on a sliding fee scale or without charge. Under § 105.009(j) the county clerk may keep a registry of providers marking which are sliding-scale or free. No parenting-class fee appears in the OCA statewide filing-fee charts, because this is paid to a course provider and not to the clerk. Tex. Fam. Code § 105.009(a), (c), (j), (k) | $0.00 – $100.00 per party |
| Court-ordered mediationThe only mediation-related money published statewide is the County Dispute Resolution Fund share of the mandatory $213 local fee (Harris County itemizes it as “Dispute Resolution fee 601 – $15.00”). The cost of an actual court-ordered mediation session is not published in any statewide Texas fee chart, so no amount is asserted. Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code § 135.101(b) allocates part of the $213 Local Consolidated Civil Fee to a County Dispute Resolution Fund | not published |
| Credit-card convenience fee, if you e-fileNo e-filing fee or card surcharge appears in the OCA statewide charts or in five of the six county schedules we read (Travis prints a 3% convenience fee on credit card transactions with the clerk), and part of the $137 State Consolidated Civil Fee is routed to the Statewide Electronic Filing System Fund, so the court itself does not bill for the portal. The payment side is charged separately and the state publishes it: eFileTexas.gov states that “all electronic submissions with associated court costs are subject to a convenience fee” and gives a “Credit card processing fee: 2.89%” (page last modified 29 August 2025). That is $10.12 on $350.00 and $11.59 on $401.00. It is avoidable – e-filing is mandatory for attorneys but not for self-represented filers. Commercial filing service providers may add their own charges on top; those vary by provider and are not published in one place, so no figure is given for them. eFileTexas.gov, Frequently Asked Questions – Understanding Fees | 2.89% of the amount paid |
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.
Texas 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: No income table is published. Rule 145(d) instead lists three forms of PRIMA FACIE evidence of inability to pay: (1) the declarant or a dependent receives benefits from a means-tested government entitlement program; (2) the declarant is represented by an attorney providing legal services through a provider funded by the Texas Access to Justice Foundation, a provider funded by the Legal Services Corporation, or a nonprofit serving people at or below 200% of the federal poverty guidelines; or (3) the declarant applied to such a provider, was found financially eligible, but was declined representation.
- What it covers: Rule 145(a) defines costs broadly as “any fee charged by the court or an officer of the court, including, but not limited to, filing fees, fees for issuance and service of process, fees for copies, fees for a court-appointed professional, and fees charged by the clerk or court reporter for preparation of the appellate record.” Rule 145(c) requires the clerk to make the Statement available free without request, to return it only if it is unsworn, and on filing to docket the case, issue citation, and provide any other ordinary service. The Harris County District Clerk’s schedule repeats this: with an uncontested Statement you are entitled to copies and other documents at no charge.
- What to ask for: Statement of Inability to Afford Payment of Court Costs, approved by the Supreme Court of Texas (or another sworn document containing the same information)
- How it works: Statement of Inability to Afford Payment of Court Costs, sworn before a notary or made under penalty of perjury, filed under Texas Rule of Civil Procedure 145. No motion or court permission is needed to file it.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- Which Texas counties have established a Domestic Relations Office. That is what decides whether a divorce with children costs $350.00 or up to $401.00, and Texas publishes no statewide list of them that we could find. Your district clerk’s own schedule is the answer for your county.
- We have confirmed the divorce filing fee for 11 of 254 counties: Bexar, Cameron, Collin, Dallas, Denton, El Paso, Fort Bend, Harris, Hidalgo, Tarrant and Travis (see our county-by-county filing fees page; the table on this page shows six of them). Those 11 agree on a $350 base. A few other counties print different amounts or no divorce line (Bell $228, undated; Lubbock $377 on a 2022 schedule; Williamson and Montgomery name no divorce fee) and we have not confirmed them. We have not read the remaining counties and do not claim to have.
- Bexar County’s fee schedule page prints no effective date; its table is headed only “2025 FEE”, so we give no effective date and have not inferred one.
- The cost of an actual court-ordered mediation session is not published in any Texas statewide fee chart.
- What the commercial eFileTexas service providers charge. The state portal’s own 2.89% card fee is published and is in the table above; the individual providers’ service charges are not published in any one place, and we have not priced them one by one.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Texas’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 Texas 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
Texas 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 Texas. Every figure is quoted from Texas’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Common questions about filing costs in Texas
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 Texas?
$350 – $401 to open the case. $350.00 is the base filing fee in the counties we read, made up of $213 under Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code § 135.101(a)(1) plus $137 under § 133.151(a)(1), both marked “Local Option: No” on the state’s own chart. The $401.00 top of the range is what Dallas, Bexar, El Paso and Tarrant publish for a divorce involving children, once the county’s Domestic Relations Office fees are added. Every figure on this page is traced to Texas’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 Texas county?
Not confirmed for every county. In the 11 counties we read, the base for a divorce with no children is $350.00. The two fees that make it up are statutory and the state’s own chart marks both “Local Option: No – Fee is mandatory,” but a few counties print other amounts or no divorce line (Bell $228, undated; Lubbock $377 on a 2022 schedule; Williamson and Montgomery name no divorce fee) and we have not confirmed them. Where there are children a county that has established a Domestic Relations Office may add up to $51.00 on top, which is where the $350 – $401 range comes from: Collin publishes $350.00 flat, Harris adds a $15.00 Domestic Relations Fee ($365.00), Travis prints a separate $15.00 DRO line with no combined total, and Dallas, Bexar, El Paso and Tarrant publish $401.00. We have read 11 county schedules of 254 and say so rather than implying we have mapped the state.
Is the filing fee the whole cost of a divorce in Texas?
No, and it is the small number. The filing fee is what it costs to open the case. Serving the papers, the 2.89% card fee if you e-file, a parent education course if the court orders one (capped at $100 per party by Tex. Fam. Code § 105.009(k)), 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 Texas?
There is a process for asking the court to waive or defer it, and this page sets out what Texas requires. You do not have to have decided anything, or have a lawyer, to ask.
How current is this Texas 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.
Filing fee by county. We read the divorce filing fee in 11 Texas counties from each clerk’s own schedule, with the date printed on it. Texas divorce filing fees by county →