How much more expensive will divorce from spouse with an unknown address be compared to situation where the address of the spouse is known?
I did some reading on this topic, however I still do not have a good feel how difficult and expensive it is in practice.
In order to divorce your spouse, you need to serve your spouse with legal process, basically a summons and petition and sometimes a civil case cover sheet, that alerts the spouse to the fact that there is a deadline to appear in the divorce lawsuit to defend their rights.
The court does not have jurisdiction to enter orders unrelated to securing service of process in a divorce case until the spouse is served with process.
My cost estimates are primarily based upon both urban Colorado (with relatively high prices) and rural Colorado (with relatively low prices). The low end estimates are likely to hold true nationwide in the U.S., the high end estimates may be low in the most expensive pockets of the United States.
These costs do not include the cost of drawing up the papers to commence the divorce (which are typically pretty modest and form driven), or the cost of litigating the divorce case once process is served (which can very profoundly based upon the details of the case).
Special rules, not discussed in this answer, apply to spouses who are in U.S. military service, which are found in the Soldier's and Sailor's Relief Act of 1940 (a.k.a. the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act).
The federal U.S. District Courts, as a matter a federal common law, do not have any jurisdiction to consider divorce cases. Divorce cases must be brought in either a state trial court with jurisdiction under state law to grant divorces, or in the equivalent courts (which are technically federal courts as well, but not Article III of the U.S. Constitution judicial branch courts) in the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or other U.S. territories that are not U.S. states.
There are few if any price regulations for any of the professionals who must be paid in these cases, although sheriffs deputies will usually serve someone with process for a fee set by the state per attempt. So, it is possible that someone may be able to find someone cheaper than the prices described in this post (which are as of March 2025), or may only be able to find more expensive providers. The ranges given are intended to reflect roughly the middle 80% range of what this can cost.
In something like 90%-95% of divorce cases, the spouse's address or some other place where the spouse regularly goes in person and can be served with process is known. In 90%-95% of the cases where the spouse's address isn't known, it can be determined with due diligence, as discussed below. So, cases where the spouse's address isn't known and can't be determined are unusual, although not unheard of.
Once an address is known, a process server can be hired to hand deliver papers, which can typically cost from $50 to $350 depending upon the difficulty involved in hand delivering the papers and the number of attempts required.
If someone is particularly tricky to deliver papers to, one may have to hire a private investigator to attempt it, at prices similar to those discussed below to hire a private investigator to locate someone, or petition the court to allow substituted service, as discussed below.
If an address isn't known, usually, one has to hire a firm to, at minimum conduct what is called a "skip trace" to locate the spouse if the address isn't known and there is no other way to personally deliver divorce papers to the spouse, which can cost from $50 to $500 in the usual case, sometimes on a success only basis, and sometimes on a pay even if no address is located. If a spouse has simply moved away without telling the other spouse, and isn't otherwise trying to hide, and is still within the U.S., a skip trace is successful something on the order of 75%-85% of the time. A skip trace typically takes something between a few hours and a week to perform.
If a simple skip trace isn't sufficient, a full fledged investigation by a private investigator may be needed. This costs the hourly rate of the investigator (usually $75-$500 per hour) times however many hours it takes the investigator to get it done, plus incidental expenses incurred by the investigator. Locating people is the bread and butter work of private investigators and is a significant share of most PIs annual fees collected from clients.
Sometimes a good and lucky private investigator can figure it out in two or three hours for as little as one or two thousand dollars, sometimes it can take many months and tens of thousands of dollars of private investigator charges.
If a skip trace isn't successful, a private investigator is usually successful about 50%-60% of the time.
About 5%-10% of the time when a spouse's address isn't known, the spouse simply can't be found at all, despite the efforts of skip tracing firms and private investigators. In some portion of that 5%-10% of the time, the spouse became a missing person and is actually dead (which makes the divorce moot), although determining that a missing person is actually dead can sometimes take years.
Most of the time, paying someone to attempt to find a spouse's address is cheaper and faster than attempting substituted service or service by publication.
The costs of locating an address are in addition to the costs of serving the spouse with process once the address is known, set forth above.
If duly diligent efforts are made to locate the spouse's address and deliver papers to the spouse personally fail, but there is some way to contact the spouse that is well-calculated to give actual notice of the divorce case to the spouse, the court in a divorce case can authorize "substituted service of process", for example, through certified mail, or email, or a text message, or a direct message on social media, or a building doorman, or through a lawyer that represents the spouse in an unrelated matter, or through an employer of the spouse.
The cost of several failed attempts to locate and serve the spouse before seeking permission for substituted service would typically be on the order of $200-$1000. The cost of ex parte motion practice to get permission to use substituted service would typically be on the order of $1000, depending upon the lawyer's hourly rate and the extent to which the lawyer has up to date forms from having had to make similar motions in the past. Conducting the substituted service as directed would typically cost $100-$200.
So, the total cost would be from $1,300 to $2,200.
Sometimes a judge will deny a motion for substituted service because the party seeking the divorce hasn't tried hard enough yet, or because the judge doesn't think the method by which substituted service is to be achieved is sufficient.
Without personal service, i.e. with service by publication is allowed if duly diligent efforts have been made to locate the spouse and deliver divorce papers to the spouse personally, and there is no feasible way to make substituted service of process.
But in a divorce case where the only service on the spouse has been by publication, while the marriage can be terminated, but the court has no jurisdiction to order to other spouse to pay child support or alimony, or to turn over property to divide, or to comply with child custody orders. And, if the spouse who was served by publication didn't receive actual notice of the divorce, any orders made by the court in the case where there was service by publication, except the termination of the marriage itself, can be set aside and relitigated when the spouse gains actual knowledge of the divorce case and enters an appearance.
The cost of several failed attempts to locate and serve the spouse before seeking permission to serve by publication would typically be on the order of $200-$1000. The cost of ex parte motion practice to get permission to serve by publication, would typically be on the order of $1000, depending upon the lawyer's hourly rate and the extent to which the lawyer has up to date forms from having had to make similar motions in the past. The cost of making the publication itself would typically range from $200-$1,500 (with low price in deeply rural areas and the higher prices in large cities).
So, the total cost would be $1,400 to $3,500 (but also, as described below, in addition to the reduced relief that the court can provide, there will be additional litigation costs once service by publication is achieved and there is a great risk that the entire case will have to be redone from scratch when a spouse receives actual notice of the case).
The complications that service by publication creates would also make the divorce proceedings more expensive, but since the spouse would typically default, the lack of having two sides arguing over issues in the case would typically make divorce proceedings less expensive. So, it might be 50%-100% more expensive to litigate post-service by publication, than it is in a divorce where the spouse is served with process personally but defaults, but much cheaper than a divorce in which both spouses appear with lawyers.
Sometimes a judge will deny a motion for service by publication because the party seeking the divorce hasn't tried hard enough yet to personally serve the spouse with process.
Service by publication is also typically the slowest. Between due diligence and the publication itself, it typically takes about two months to complete service by publication.
Substituted service between due diligence and carrying it out, typically takes about a month to complete.
Personal service when you have a residential or employment address at which to service someone with process typically takes only a few days. But, it can take longer when the address is known but the person to be served with process is temporarily away from home, for example, on a business trip or a vacation at an unknown or far away location.
Of course, any time a court ruling is required (e.g. for substituted service or service by publication) your mileage may vary. Some courts are faster and some courts are slower.
Process services, skip tracers, and private investigators, as well as the lawyer for the person seeking the divorce, must typically be paid up front by the person seeking the divorce.
In a divorce, cost and fee shifting works differently than in other cases. Typically, costs and legal fees are allocated in proportion to the ability of the spouses to pay, and not based upon one person "winning" and another "losing" or litigation fault.
The fact that a spouse was hard to serve with process rarely justifies making them pay for the costs of doing so, unless the spouse took active and extraordinary efforts to evade service of process without good cause for doing so.