What a Utah 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 stateUtah
It costs $350.00 to file for divorce in Utah. 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. Utah is the only one of these five states where the classes are genuinely mandatory with minor children AND the fees are published — $65 per parent on top of the $350 filing fee. The buried saving: the Divorce Orientation course costs $15 less if you attend IN PERSON within 30 days of filing (or of being served), and the court states outright that the online version is never discounted. Utah also has a mandatory 30-day waiting period and a separate class requirement that will stop the judge signing your final order until certificates are filed.
The short version7 points · tap one to jump to it
- Where the money goes — Utah publishes no component breakdown.
- Does it change by county? — Utah's district court filing fees are set by statute (§78A-2-301) and published as one statewide schedule by the Administrative Office of the Courts.
- 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 — Utah publishes no component breakdown.
- Does it change by county? — Utah's district court filing fees are set by statute (§78A-2-301) and published as one statewide schedule by the Administrative Office of the Courts.
- 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
Utah does not break this down
Utah publishes no component breakdown. The Utah State Courts fee table has three columns — ‘Type of Filing, Action, or Service’, ‘Subsection’, ‘Fee’ — and the row reads ‘Divorce or Separate Maintenance | Subsection (1)(b)(iv) | $350.00’. It is a single statutory figure, not a sum of surcharges. No breakdown has been invented.
Does it change by county?
No — the fee is the same everywhere in Utah
Utah’s district court filing fees are set by statute (§78A-2-301) and published as one statewide schedule by the Administrative Office of the Courts. The classes are likewise statewide — in-person classes may be taken at any location regardless of where the case is filed, and USU Extension is the single court-approved online provider.
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 Utah 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 Utah kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Answer / counterclaim / cross claim in a divorce or separate maintenance caseMuch lower than the $350 the petitioner pays, and lower than the $170 general civil counterclaim fee. Utah Code §78A-2-301(1)(d)(iv) | $130.00 |
| Mandatory Parenting CourseMANDATORY where there are children under 18. Both parents must take it. Petitioner within 60 days of filing; respondent within 30 days of receiving the Notice of Required Classes. USU Extension is the only court-approved online provider. Utah Code §81-9-103 (mandatory parenting course for parties in a divorce or parentage action); UCJA Rule 4-907 | $35.00 per person |
| Divorce Orientation CourseMANDATORY where there are children under 18, in addition to the parenting course. Discounted by $15 for a petitioner who attends IN PERSON within 30 days of filing, and by $15 for a respondent who attends in person within 30 days of being served. The court states plainly: ‘The fee for the online Divorce Orientation course will not be discounted.’ Utah Code §81-4-105 (mandatory orientation course for divorce or temporary separation orders); UCJA Rule 4-907 | $30.00 per person |
| Divorce Education for Children (ages 6–17)Optional, not mandatory, and explicitly ‘free of charge’. Taught online by licensed mental health professionals. | $0.00 |
| Motion for Temporary Separation Order Utah Code §78A-2-301(1)(b)(v) | $35.00 |
| Petition or counter petition to modify a divorce decree Utah Code §78A-2-301(1)(q) | $100.00 |
| Demand for jury in a civil case Utah Code §78A-2-301(1)(s) | $250.00 |
| Certified copy of the decreeExemplified copies are $6.00 per document + $0.50 per page under (1)(aa). Utah Code §78A-2-301(1)(z) | $4.00 per document + $0.50 per page |
| Sheriff/constable service of process per respondentNo service-of-process fee appears on the Utah State Courts fee schedule, which covers only fees payable to the court. Utah’s divorce self-help page lists ‘Fees to serve the petition and summons’ as a separate cost category but publishes no amount. | not published |
| Court-ordered mediationNo mediation fee is published on the court fee schedule. | not published |
| E-filing or credit-card surchargeNot published on the fee schedule. Utah’s divorce page does list ‘MyPaperwork fees’ and a ‘Fee for the Office of Vital Records and Statistics’ as real cost categories, but publishes no amount for either. | 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.
Utah 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 single dollar threshold is published. The court’s own screening questions treat you as likely to qualify if you receive SNAP (food stamps), Medicaid, SSI, or FEP/TANF, or if you receive services from a nonprofit legal services provider or a pro bono attorney through the Utah State Bar. Fee waiver statutes: Utah Code §§78A-2-302 through 78A-2-309.
- What it covers: Court filing fees AND the class fees — the Utah Courts class page instructs: ‘If the judge grants the request to waive the fees, you must give a copy of the signed order to the person teaching the class’, and for in-person classes, ‘Bring the money for class or if the court waived the fee bring your signed Order on Motion to Waive Fees.’ The online provider has a separate published procedure for submitting the waiver.
- What to ask for: Motion to Waive Fees; Order on Motion to Waive Fees
- How it works: Motion to Waive Fees plus a proposed Order on Motion to Waive Fees, decided by a judge under UCJA Rule 4-508.
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- Whether the Divorce Orientation Course is required in a divorce with NO minor children could not be confirmed. The Utah Courts class page frames every requirement around ‘If you have children under 18’, and we could not retrieve the statutory text of §81-4-105 because le.utah.gov renders statute text via JavaScript.
- No service-of-process, mediation, MyPaperwork or Vital Records fee amounts are published on any Utah court page located.
- No published income threshold for the fee waiver.
- Sources we could not read: https://www.utcourts.gov/* — returned HTTP 406 to a plain user-agent (bot filtering). Resolved by sending a standard browser User-Agent and Accept headers; no CAPTCHA was encountered or bypassed.; https://le.utah.gov/xcode/Title78A/Chapter2/78A-2-S301.html and …/Title81/Chapter4/81-4-S105.html — pages load statute text via JavaScript, so a plain fetch returns only site chrome.
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Utah’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 Utah 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
Utah 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 Utah. Every figure is quoted from Utah’s own statute or its courts’ own published schedule, and carries the date we last checked it.
Common questions about filing costs in Utah
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 Utah?
$350 to open the case. What the court actually publishes is $350.00. Every figure on this page is traced to Utah’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 Utah county?
Yes. Utah sets the filing fee statewide, so the figure is the same whichever county you file in. It is $350.
Is the filing fee the whole cost of a divorce in Utah?
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 Utah?
There is a process for asking the court to waive or defer it, and this page sets out what Utah requires. You do not have to have decided anything, or have a lawyer, to ask.
How current is this Utah 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.