April, 2003
Filing a Complaint
(Part 1 of a 6 Part Series on Divorce Procedure)
I thought I would do a series on the court procedure of going through a divorce. The first step of the process is to file a Complaint for Divorce with the Court and have your spouse served with the Summons.
The Complaint is actually a preprinted form that asks for a variety of information such as your names, addresses, children's names and dates of birth, when and where you were married, when and where you separated, etc. Page 3 of [the April, 2003 Plymouth New Beginnings] newsletter contains a sample Complaint for Divorce.
There are a number of other forms that must be filed with the Complaint so when you go to the courthouse, ask the clerk for the whole package. These forms are informational in nature and are self explanatory as to how they should be filled out.
After you have filled out the Complaint package, take the documents to the Probate and Family Court and file them with the Court Clerk, along with your money order in the amount of $150.00 for the filing fee. Then you go home and wait for the Court to mail you the Summons.
The Summons is an official notice to your spouse that you are suing him/her for divorce and that s/he has 20 days in which to file an Answer to your complaint. In order to perfect your filing, you must have your spouse served with the Summons and a copy of the Complaint by a Deputy Sheriff. The easiest way is to mail the documents to the Sheriff's Department so you want to call ahead and find out how much it will cost as you will need to pay in advance. The average cost of having someone served is around $45.00.
After the Sheriff has served your spouse with the Complaint, he will mail the Summons back to you with his verification that service has been completed. This is called the Return of Service. You must then file this Summons/Return of Service with the Court. You have now successfully filed your Complaint with the Court and are ready for the next step of getting some temporary orders placed into effect.
