Divorce in South Carolina: what to expect
What a divorce in South Carolina actually involves: how property is divided, how long you must have lived there, what you have to prove, how long it takes, and what the court is deciding about the children. South Carolina is an equitable distribution state. The court divides marital property fairly, which is not the same as equally, and the difference is where the argument happens.
See a different stateSouth Carolina
Every line below is taken from the statute or the court, and the citation is next to it so you can check us. It is still not advice about your case. The same statute produces very different outcomes on different facts, and the parts that decide your outcome — the length of the marriage, who earned what, whose name is on what — are not on this page because we do not know them. Use this to know what questions to ask, not to predict an answer.
South Carolina at a glance
Every row is cited. Where a row says we could not confirm it, that is exactly what it means — we went looking and would not guess.
| Question | The answer in this state | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Property division | equitable distribution | S.C. Code § 20-3-620 |
| How it works in practice | Court makes a final equitable apportionment of the parties’ marital property upon request in the pleadings. | S.C. Code § 20-3-620 |
| Residency requirement | If both spouses reside in SC, filing spouse needs only 3 months of state residency; if only one spouse resides in SC, at least one year is required | S.C. Code § 20-3-30 |
| Waiting period | No final decree may be granted before 3 months after the complaint is filed (and no reference/hearing before 2 months); exception: on the grounds of desertion or one-year separation, the hearing may be held and decree issued as soon as responsive pleadings are filed or the respondent is in default | S.C. Code § 20-3-80 |
| The no-fault ground | Husband and wife have lived separate and apart without cohabitation for a period of one year | S.C. Code § 20-3-10 |
| Filing fee | $150 statewide ($100 clerk filing fee under § 8-21-310(C)(1) plus $50 additional fee under § 14-1-204(A)) for filing a first complaint in a court of record, which includes Family Court | S.C. Code § 8-21-310(C)(1); § 14-1-204(A) |
| Alimony | Called ‘alimony’. Court may award periodic, lump-sum, rehabilitative, reimbursement, separate maintenance and support, or any other form of spousal support, after weighing 13 statutory factors including duration of marriage and ages, health, education, employment history and earning potential, standard of living, income and expenses, property, custody, marital misconduct affecting finances or causing the breakup, tax consequences and prior support obligations; no duration formula or dollar cap in statute. | S.C. Code § 20-3-130 |
| Custody standard | Best interest of the child, with a non-exhaustive list of 17 statutory factors | S.C. Code § 63-15-240(B) |
| Any parenting-time presumption | No statutory presumption about equal time found | — |
Grounds: what you have to say happened
The no-fault ground in South Carolina is: Husband and wife have lived separate and apart without cohabitation for a period of one year. S.C. Code § 20-3-10
Fault grounds still exist here. They are rarely worth using and they make a case longer and more expensive, but they exist, and in some states they can affect property or alimony:
- adultery
- desertion for one year
- physical cruelty
- habitual drunkenness or narcotic drug addiction
What is unusual about South Carolina
The things that surprise people who assumed their state works like the one they read about.
- South Carolina’s residency rule is unusually flexible: only 3 months if both spouses already live in the state, versus roughly a year if only one does.
- South Carolina does not have a legal presumption of equal parenting time.
How long you were married. Almost every alimony statute in the country turns on it, and most have unwritten thresholds judges apply. Whose name is on what. It matters far less than people expect in a community property state and far more than people expect for a house bought before the marriage. Whether either of you brought money in. Separate property stays separate until it is mixed with marital money, and then the argument is about how thoroughly. The questions that decide it are here.
Compiled 31 August 2026 from South Carolina statutes and court sources, each linked in the table. Re-read line by line against the statutes on 3 September 2026; every row above was confirmed or corrected at the official source that day. Statutes change, and several states have changed theirs recently. Tell us if we have one wrong.
Keep reading
- The South Carolina divorce kit — forms, fees and deadlines
- Legal help in South Carolina you can afford
- Who gets what — the questions that decide it
- What a South Carolina divorce costs
- What two households cost
- What people wish they had known