What a Washington 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 stateWashington
It costs $364.00 to file for divorce in Washington. 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. $54 of your Washington filing fee has nothing to do with your divorce: RCW 36.18.016(2)(b) directs the clerk to send $48 of it to the state domestic violence prevention account and leave $6 with the county for community-based domestic violence services. And a common misreading is worth correcting – the county law library charge under RCW 27.24.070 is NOT added to your bill; it is $17 (up to $20, or $30 in multi-site counties) taken out of the fee you already paid.
Where the money goes
Washington publishes both the statutory components (in RCW 36.18.020 and 36.18.016) and the assembled county total. The five components above are exactly the authorities the county clerks cite next to their $364.00 dissolution line – e.g., King County prints ‘$364.00 Dissolution of Marriage – RCW 36.18.020(2,5,6); RCW 36.18.016(2)(b); RCW 36.18.016(15)’. Important non-component: the county law library money under RCW 27.24.070 is NOT an extra charge to the filer – the statute directs the county treasurer to ‘deposit in the county or regional law library fund a sum equal to seventeen dollars for every new probate or civil filing fee … collected by the clerk’, i.e. it is carved out of what you already paid (and may be raised to $20, or $30 in multi-site counties, on a showing of need).
| Component | Amount |
|---|---|
| Superior court civil case-initiating filing fee‘the party filing the first or initial document in any civil action … shall pay, at the time the document is filed, a fee of $200’. Latest amendment printed in the history line: 2025 c 357 s 1. RCW 36.18.020(2)(a) | $200.00 |
| Judicial stabilization surcharge‘On all filing fees required to be collected under this section, except for fees required under subsection (2)(b), (d), and (h) of this section, a surcharge of $40 must be collected.’ 75% to the state judicial stabilization trust account, 25% retained by the county. RCW 36.18.020(5)(c) | $40.00 |
| Legacy project / archives / judicial stabilization surchargeApplies to fees collected under (2)(a), so it applies to a dissolution. ‘$45 of such surcharge must be transmitted … $20 in the Washington state legacy project, state library, and archives account and $25 in the judicial stabilization trust account.’ RCW 36.18.020(6) | $50.00 |
| Dissolution / legal separation / validity petition surcharge (domestic violence prevention)‘The party filing the first or initial petition for dissolution, legal separation, or declaration concerning the validity of marriage shall pay, at the time and in addition to the filing fee required under RCW 36.18.020, a fee of $54.’ $48 goes to the state domestic violence prevention account; $6 stays in the county for community-based domestic violence services. RCW 36.18.016(2)(b) | $54.00 |
| Courthouse facilitator surcharge (county option)‘The legislative authority of any county may impose user fees or may impose a surcharge of up to twenty dollars on only those superior court cases filed under Title 26 RCW’. King, Snohomish and Clark all cite it in their dissolution line, and Clark separately lists ‘Family Court Facilitator – Fee for Services (User Fee) 20.00’. RCW 26.12.240; collected under RCW 36.18.016(15) | up to $20.00 |
How it changes by county
The statutory core is uniform: $200 + $40 + $50 under RCW 36.18.020 and $54 under RCW 36.18.016(2)(b). On top of that a county’s legislative authority MAY add a courthouse facilitator surcharge ‘of up to twenty dollars’ under RCW 26.12.240, and counties may impose other local charges under RCW 36.18.016. All three county schedules I could verify land on exactly $364.00, which is the statutory core plus a full $20 facilitator surcharge. A county that levied a smaller facilitator surcharge, or none, would charge less – I could not find one that publishes a different figure.
The published range
$364 – $364 across the three county schedules confirmed (see note) across the counties we were able to confirm from official sources.
| County | Published fee | Schedule dated |
|---|---|---|
| King | $364.00 | Schedule effective June 11, 2026official source |
| Snohomish | $364.00 | Effective July 8, 2026official source |
| Clark | $364.00 | no date printedofficial 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.
What it costs to file it electronically
- Portal fee
- King County: 'E-filing via the KC Script Portal is free for most documents; however, some documents require a fee to file by law.' Snohomish County: no fee for using eFile & Serve itself; statutory filing fees apply.
- If you pay by card
- King County: '$2.49 processing fee for credit card transactions.' Snohomish County: 'an eCommerce transaction fee… (2.89% of total fees for credit and debit cards).'
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 Washington kit.
| Cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Service of process by sheriff, per respondentThe Snohomish schedule is printed as ‘Effective July 1, 2019’. It also lists ‘SERVICE ON INMATE IN JAIL $100.00’ and a $10.00 minimum mileage charge. Sheriff fees are set county by county, so this is one county’s published figure, not a statewide number. County sheriff fee schedule adopted under RCW 36.18.040 and county code (Snohomish County Code 2.10.035) | Snohomish County Sheriff: $77.00 service (each) + $23.00 return, plus mileage; advance fee estimate $120.00 |
| Parenting/parent-education class, if requiredMANDATORY with minor children, but by LOCAL rule rather than statewide statute: ‘Kitsap County Local Superior Court Rules (KCLFLR 10) require that parents involved in dissolution and/or legal separation actions (and certain paternity actions) who have minor children must attend mandatory parenting seminars. The Court will approve final parenting plans only after both parties have satisfactorily completed an approved parenting seminar.’ The seminars are run by approved outside agencies (in Kitsap: the local Dispute Resolution Center and Olympic College), and the court publishes no price, so the amount is null. Local superior court rule (e.g., Kitsap County KCLFLR 10) | not published |
| Court-ordered mediationNo official statewide or county-published mediation fee located. Some counties list a civil arbitration filing fee (King: $250.00 under RCW 36.18.016(24)), but that is arbitration in civil cases, not family-law mediation. Null rather than guessed. | not published |
| E-filing or credit-card surchargeKing County states ‘Payments for filing fees and services made online must be made by electronic check or credit card. Note that a transaction service charge applies to electronic payments’ – but does not publish the amount. Reported as null. | 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.
Washington 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: GR 34(a)(3): you are indigent if you currently receive needs-based, means-tested assistance (e.g., federal TANF); OR ‘(B) their household income is at or below 125 percent of the federal poverty guideline’; OR (C) household income is above 125 percent but other circumstances show inability to pay.
- What it covers: Filing fees AND surcharges. The rule’s official Comment is explicit that it reaches ‘legislatively established filing fees and surcharges (e.g., RCW 36.18.020(5)); other initial filing charges required by statute (e.g., family court facilitator surcharges established pursuant to RCW 26.12.240 … domestic violence prevention surcharges established pursuant to RCW 36.18.016(2)(b))’ – i.e., the $54 and the $20 go too, not just the base $200.
- What to ask for: Mandatory AOC pattern form for GR 34 waiver (form number not printed in the rule text). Snohomish County publishes a ‘Fee Waiver Packet’ at https://snohomishcountywa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/71440/Fee-Waiver-Packet
- How it works: Apply for a GR 34 waiver. ‘Any individual, on the basis of indigent status as defined herein, may seek a waiver of filing fees or surcharges the payment of which is a condition precedent to a litigant’s ability to secure access to judicial relief.’ The application may be made ex parte, in writing or orally, on a mandatory AOC pattern form. ‘There shall be no locally imposed fee for making an application.’
What we could not find out
Open questions on this page
- Pierce County could not be confirmed. piercecountywa.gov (and the co.pierce.wa.us alias) sit behind a Cloudflare bot challenge that returns HTTP 403 to every request. I substituted Clark County so that three real Washington counties are reported with sources.
- I could not find a Washington county that publishes a dissolution fee other than $364.00, so no genuine low-end of the range is evidenced. The $364 figure equals the statutory items plus a full $20 facilitator surcharge; a county levying a smaller surcharge would charge less, but I am not asserting a lower number without a source.
- No dollar amount is published by any court for the mandatory parenting seminar – the providers set it.
- King County confirms a ‘transaction service charge’ on electronic payments but does not publish the amount.
- Sources we could not read: https://www.piercecountywa.gov/1230/Fees and https://www.piercecountywa.gov/1030/Clerk – HTTP 403, Cloudflare interstitial challenge; not bypassed; https://www.co.pierce.wa.us/1230/Fees – HTTP 403, same challenge; https://www.co.benton.wa.us/ – HTTP 403
We would rather show you a blank than a plausible number. Everything above is a real limit on what Washington’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 Washington 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
Washington attorneys, mediators, CDFAs and therapists, credentials checked against the state’s own records. Nobody paid to be there.