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Courts only use service by publication as a last resort, so be prepared to show that you
have exhausted all possible means of locating your spouse. Keep a record of your
attempts to contact your spouse. Try serving your spouse by mail using his/her last
known address. Ask relatives, friends, employers, and co-workers where your spouse can
be contacted. Ask a friend to check the city and county telephone directories in the
locales where you suspect your spouse may reside, the voters’ register, the Department of
Motor Vehicles, and the County Tax Assessor. You can also try contacting The
Salvation Army Missing Persons Services at PO Box 22646, Long Beach, CA 90802;
phone: 1-800-698-7728. They do charge a fee for this service. If you were unable to
track down the whereabouts of your spouse, then you can ask the court to authorize
service by publication.
4. How can I pay the cost of filing a divorce petition or filing my response?
The filing fee for the dissolution petition varies from county to county, but is usually
around $300. If you file for your divorce without an attorney, you will need to file your
petition pro per, which means that you are representing yourself. If your income is low
enough, you may request that the court allow you to file without paying court fees and
costs. Ask for Forms FW-001 (Application for Waiver of Court Fees and Costs) and
FW-003 (Order on Application of Court Fees and Costs). File these forms along with
your dissolution petition or your response. If approved by the court, you will not be
required to pay for the filing of your divorce petition. There is no guarantee, however,
that being incarcerated alone will mean you don’t have to pay the filing fees. If you
received public assistance before your incarceration, include proof of that with the waiver
application; otherwise provide proof of your income now that you are incarcerated (a
copy of your “inmate trust account” should satisfy this requirement).
5. What should I do after receiving the divorce papers?
(a) First read the documents very carefully. You need to know what your spouse
is asking the court to order regarding your children and property.
(b) Consider hiring an attorney if the divorce proceeding seems too complicated,
or if you expect a fight over child custody or division of property.
(c) If you cannot afford an attorney, contact a legal services or legal aid office in the
county where the divorce petition was filed. Keep in mind that some legal
services offices do not handle divorces, and some only in certain circumstances.
You may want to contact the volunteer legal services office in the county where
the petition is filed to see if they handle dissolution cases. You can get their
telephone number from the white pages of the local telephone directory. If you
do not have access to the local telephone directory in the county of the divorce
petition, ask the local legal services office to send you the address of the volunteer
legal services pro bono assistance office for the county where the divorce was
filed. If no one can or will help you, you can consult our “How To Do Your Own
Divorce” guide.
6. What is a default dissolution?