Reference

Our sources

Where a number comes from matters as much as the number itself. This page lists every source behind the figures on this site, links to each one, and tells you which figures we have checked ourselves and which are still estimates.

Court filing fees, waiting periods and residency rules

These come from each state's official judiciary. They are public facts and they are checkable — which is why we treat them differently from every other number on this site. Where we have opened the court's published fee schedule and read the figure ourselves, we record the amount, the URL and the date. Where we have not, the figure is an estimate and says so.

We do not mark a fee verified because it appears on another website, and we do not carry a verification date forward from a previous check. Only a check performed by a person counts.

All 51 official court sources

✓ means a person opened that court's fee schedule and confirmed the figure on the date shown. Estimate means the figure has not yet been independently checked — confirm it with the court before you file. Links open the court's own site.

Attorney cost ranges

Courts do not publish what lawyers charge, and no authoritative national register exists. Our hourly rate ranges and total-cost bands are drawn from published bar association fee surveys, state bar member resources and aggregated market rate reporting.

These are estimates of what people commonly pay, not quotes. No attorney is bound by them, rates vary considerably between metropolitan and rural areas within the same state, and the total you pay depends far more on how contested your case becomes than on any hourly figure. If an attorney quotes you something outside our range, the attorney is right and we are approximate.

Our own calculations

Two things on this site come from us rather than from any external source, and we would rather say so here than let you assume otherwise.

• Complexity and income multipliers. The calculator adjusts a base range according to case complexity and household income. These multipliers are ours. No state publishes them and no survey produced them — they are our reasoned attempt to model how complexity drives cost.
• Alimony estimates. Our figure is a national approximation applied consistently, not any particular state's statutory formula — including in the states that publish one. Where your state has a formula, that formula governs, not ours.

Full detail is on our editorial policy page.

Divorce statistics

National marriage and divorce rate figures reference the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics: NCHS — Marriage and Divorce ↗. Note that several states do not report divorce counts to the NVSS, so national totals published there exclude them.

What we deliberately do not use

• Other cost-calculator sites. Citing a competitor's number tells you nothing about whether it is right, and errors propagate quickly this way.
• Law firm marketing pages. Often accurate, but written to attract clients, and rarely dated.
• AI-generated figures. No number on this site comes from a language model. Every figure traces to a court source, a published survey, or a documented calculation of our own.

Found an error?

Court fees change and we get things wrong. If you spot a figure that is out of date — particularly if you have filed recently and paid something different — please tell us. Include the state, the county, the amount and the date if you can.

We check every report against the official court source, correct the figure, record the new verification date and URL, and email you to confirm what changed. We aim to do this within three business days. Reader corrections are the fastest way the verification count above goes up.

Citing this data

Journalists, researchers and writers are welcome to use this table with attribution and a link. If you need the underlying data as a spreadsheet, ask us and we will send it.

Last reviewed: August 2026 · Editorial policy · Compare all states · Disclaimer