A divorce in Maryland or any other state can rearrange everything in your life, including your bank account. If you wonder, “How much does a divorce cost in Maryland?”, the short answer is that it can be thousands. The long answer is that it varies greatly depending on your circumstances and your spouse’s needs.
This article dives into how much Maryland divorce costs, including the various fees you may face and different factors that may make your divorce more or less expensive. Keep in mind, most of these rates are averages and estimates that are current as of the publication of this article.
The average cost of divorce in Maryland
Current estimates of the cost of divorce in Maryland range from about $5,500 to almost $25,000 when you total attorney fees and the cost of additional expenses such as filing and service fees, mediation and expert witnesses.
Breakdown of the costs of divorce in Maryland
At each stage of your divorce, you may face a new cost to keep your case progressing. Below we review these stages and the expenses that often accompany them.
Filing fees
A spouse begins a Maryland divorce by filing a complaint for absolute divorce with the circuit court in the appropriate county. Unless they qualify for a waiver, divorce complainants must pay a fee to file for divorce. The amount of these divorce fees in Maryland varies by county, but currently it’s typically around $200.
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Service fees
Maryland requires you to notify your spouse about your divorce filing by serving them with your divorce complaint and any attachments that go with it. Fulfilling this task could currently cost you approximately $40 to $100, depending on your location.
You can’t serve your spouse with divorce paperwork. Service must be completed in one of the following ways:
- Hiring the sheriff to deliver divorce paperwork to your spouse
- Hiring a professional process server to deliver the paperwork to your spouse
- Enlisting an adult who isn’t part of your case to deliver the paperwork to your spouse
- Enlisting an adult who isn’t part of your case to send your spouse’s divorce paperwork by certified mail (with a return receipt)
From the list above, sending divorce documents by certified mail might appear the easiest, but remember that your spouse might stall the process by refusing to sign for the delivery.
Attorney fees
Some divorcing spouses feel safer walking into court or a negotiation room with a divorce attorney. Some of these attorneys charge by the hour, while others request a flat fee for their services. On average, Maryland attorneys currently charge $260 to $325 per hour. With some legwork and negotiation, you may be able to find an attorney who charges less than the state average.
Temporary orders of support
A divorce can take several months to finalize, and the time you spend waiting for your decree can be expensive. If you and your spouse have children or your spouse has pressing financial needs, the court may enter a temporary order that requires you to pay child support or alimony pendente lite (also known as alimony pending trial).
Depending on your financial resources and family’s needs, your monthly obligation under a temporary support order could be hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Discovery
Maryland divorce courts must make determinations about the following:
- How to split marital property
- How to allocate custody rights
- The amount of each spouse’s child or spousal support obligations
To reach a fair decision in your case, you may need to present the court with convincing evidence, such as:
- Healthcare records
- Financial statements
- Witness testimony
- Property records
- Business documents
- Education records
- Employment records
Collecting this evidence can be costly in some divorce cases. At the lower end of the cost spectrum, some government agencies, financial organizations and healthcare institutions charge a few dollars for medical, financial, property or business reports. At the higher end of the spectrum, expert witnesses—such as child psychologists or forensic accountants—often charge hundreds of dollars per hour. You need to pay for both their time spent preparing for court and their time on the stand.
Additionally, not all witnesses show up to court willingly. If you need to serve someone with a subpoena, currently, it may cost between $40 and $100 for each witness.
Mediation
An amicable divorce is possible for some couples. Many achieve this through divorce mediation. The spouses meet with a neutral third party, who works to help them reach an agreement on the issues of their divorce. If your divorce settlement agreement addresses all divorce matters, and the agreement terms are fair and reasonable, the family court may make it part of the divorce decree and finalize your divorce without a lengthy trial.
You might have to pay hundreds of dollars per hour to attend mediation. Additionally, if you choose to have an attorney represent you in mediation, it could cost you an additional $200 to $300 per hour. Still, this cost is typically much less than going to court.
Trial
The cost of a divorce trial often depends on the complexity of your divorce. The more issues you have to settle and the more complicated those issues are, the longer it may take, and the more you may have to spend on attorney fees and discovery costs. Also, you might lose wages when you attend a divorce trial and incur significant expenses to travel to and from the court.
Factors that impact the cost of a Maryland divorce
Every divorce is different, which means that every divorce comes with a different price tag. Your Maryland divorce cost could be more or less than the averages quoted above, depending on the following factors:
- The type of divorce
- Whether you share children with your spouse
- Whether one party seeks spousal support
- Your shared property
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Contested divorce vs uncontested divorce
If you and your spouse can agree about all the relevant issues in your divorce, you have what’s called an uncontested divorce. You can submit a signed settlement agreement and avoid going to trial.
However, if you and your spouse disagree about any terms of the divorce, you have a contested divorce. In this instance, you’ll need to spend time in discovery, working with a lawyer and going to trial to present your case and have a judge decide those terms of the divorce.
Because of the time a contested divorce often takes, it typically costs significantly more than an uncontested divorce.
Minor children
A divorce that involves minor children tends to cost more because the divorce court must determine child support obligations and custody rights. To do this, you’ll likely need to spend money to hire an attorney and gather evidence and witness statements, and then go to trial. The time all of this takes often translates into thousands more dollars than couples without children spend on divorce proceedings.
Spousal support
Spousal support, or alimony, isn’t automatically granted in every Maryland divorce case, but spouses can request it. Courts often grant support from one spouse to another after concluding that the requesting spouse has a need. This support could cost the other spouse hundreds or thousands of dollars a month and be temporary or last for a lifetime.
Property division
Identifying marital property and separate property during a divorce can get tricky if you and your spouse co-own assets with third parties or have commingled non-marital and marital assets. To iron out what is and isn’t subject to distribution, you might have to spend more time in court or hire a forensic accountant, who could cost you several hundred dollars per hour.
There’s also the potential financial loss when the court hands down its decision. You could lose a house worth hundreds of thousands of dollars or thousands of dollars in investments. A divorce decree may also require you to pay your spouse’s debts.
When to speak with a lawyer
Whether you choose to hire an attorney to represent you in a Maryland divorce is your choice. However, some spouses find a lawyer’s services helpful because the attorney can speak on their behalf during emotionally charged moments, take the time to collect relevant evidence in their case and present their arguments favorably and persuasively.
