How Long Does It Take to Get a Divorce?

It depends. In certain circumstances, you can file a 1A petition, what’s a called a joint petition for divorce, which is a scenario where you and your spouse have basically worked out all the details ahead of time. That’s usually the product of either the parties discussing it amongst themselves with their lawyers or, more frequently, in mediation. If that’s the case, you can go right in, and you can get divorced as soon as you have the agreement done. If you have any contested issues and one party files for divorce, then it really depends on the dynamic, who your judge is and who the lawyers are.

There is a timeline in Massachusetts where we attempt to get these divorce cases done within 14 months. It really depends on which county you live in as to whether the judges are good at sticking to that timeline or not. Where I handle most of my divorces here in Worcester County, the judges are pretty good at keeping to that. That doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily going to take you 14 months to get divorced. The timeline essentially is that one party files a complaint for divorce. Service of process is made on the other party, and then an answer is served.

Then there’s some initial exchange of documents, discovery we’ll call it. There are some mandatory things that need to be exchanged. Then the parties are required to have what’s called a four-way meeting, and so you sit down with the two parties and the two lawyers. They see whether they can agree on all the issues or where they can agree and where they can agree to disagree. Every once in a while you agree on everything, and so if you have that four-way meeting within months of the filing, you can get divorced soon thereafter. More frequently, what happens is you will take a number of items off your list at the four-way meeting, and then there will still be one to several points of contention.

At that point, you will basically wait for the pretrial conference, which is scheduled by the court automatically at about the six month mark after you filed, and that’s a dress rehearsal. It’s an opportunity for the lawyers to present the arguments on the two sides of the contested issues. In most cases, you’re going to get some good feedback from the judge that day at the six month mark. If there’s one, or two, or three issues that the parties still can’t agree on, the hope is that you’re going to hear from the judge this is what he or she would do if the case were tried. In the majority of circumstances, it’s been my experience that, after all parties have seen the writings on the wall and heard from the judge what he or she would do, somewhere within the next few months you’re going to be able to negotiate the final terms of the divorce. If there are still some points of contention or one party is being unreasonable, or unfortunately, sometimes you don’t get really good feedback from the judge, then sometimes you are scheduled for a trial date at that six month mark. The hope is that that judge will stick to that 14 month timeline.