How Long Will a Divorce Take?

This is one of the most common questions that I get. Unfortunately, the correct answer is always "it depends." With that said, here are some guidelines to get a sense of how long your dissolution case might take in Snohomish County Superior Court.

Under Washington law, there must be at least a 90 day delay from the time the case is filed and served on the opposing party to when it is finalized. As a practical matter, however, divorces usually take anywhere from 6-18 months, depending on their complexity and the issues involved. Exactly how long depends on several factors (see below). In general, the more complicated a divorce is, the longer it will take.

If parties have children, time is added because there will be more work to determine what custody plan is in their best interests. If the court appoints a guardian ad litem (GAL) to make recommendations, their investigations can take several months. If a guardian ad litem makes recommendations for things like therapy for the children or parties, it can take longer as final custody recommendations are not made until those interim steps are taken.

Similarly, having more assets can add complexity to divorce proceedings. If an couple with virtually no assets decides to divorce, things are incredibly simple. On the other hand, if parties separate after twenty-five years, all kinds of new issues arise. Pensions and other retirement plans have to be valued and divided up. Houses have to be appraised to determine what their real value is. If a house was owned prior to a marriage but improved during a marriage, the parties have to determine how much community interest there is in the home. Businesses have to be analyzed to determine what they are worth and how much money they might make in the future.

As you might imagine, all of these processes take time (and usually add cost) to a divorce proceeding.

In some instances, the lawyers involved can make a process more lengthy. If an opposing party is committed to fighting each and every aspect of the divorce in court and their lawyer encourages this, relatively simple divorces can take a very long time as the parties are forced to repeatedly file motions and schedule hearings. On the other side, sometimes the two lawyers work well together, both make reasonable assessments of the case, and (knowing the likely issues and outcomes) can communicate and get a resolution much faster than if every issue was litigated.

The choices clients make have an enormous amount to do with how long divorces take. I have had cases where the parties used the divorce as a method of airing twenty years of grievances. I have had other cases where the parties had very sensible discussions about a separation plan and worked together before anyone came into my office. As you might imagine, the latter type of divorce is substantially cheaper.

A point I stress to clients is the value of communication with the other party. Especially in custody cases, communication between the divorcing parties will continue for years after the divorce. Working on this tool, even as the relationship fails, can not only expedite divorce proceedings, but drastically improve the parties' quality of life.

(I should note as an aside that there are plenty of cases where parties simply cannot have good communication and have an "easy divorce." Some conflicts are necessary and these types of cases just have to be fought out sometimes. I do not judge people in that situation at all. I only ask them to really do some soul-searching and make sure they are in the situation where the big long fight is necessary.)

Some client choices which impact the length of proceedings are very practical. The most simple illustration of this is the choice whether or not to take a case to trial. If a client wants to have a trial, it must be noted by his or her lawyer, and a trial date will be assigned by the court. Because the court hears so many trials, a case might be set for trial several times before it actually goes that far. Even after a trial occurs, it may be a month until you get a ruling from the court, and there can be post-trial motions (or even appeals) after that.

Hopefully, given the variables above, you are starting to get a sense of why "it depends" is the best answer I can truthfully give people.

Regardless of how long a matter takes, I do always end up telling my clients the same thing:

Because this process is stressful, this length of time may seem like an eternity, but it is necessary. Divorces are complicated endeavors with many important processes. Rushing a divorce makes a bad result much more likely. The orders that issue from a divorce can impact parties for the rest of their lives, so it is important that those orders are the result of proper work.

Clients spend years or decades creating the structure of their old life. Spending six to eighteen months dismantling the old life and making a new one is not an unreasonable amount of time. In many instances, I often tell clients, “You can have this now or you can have this right, but not both.” As uncomfortable as this process is, years of experience and hundreds of clients have taught me that doing things deliberately and correctly is the correct course of action.