Living inside the state for 90 days is usually not difficult to prove. This can be shown by a utility bill, rental agreement, home purchase, or change of address form filed with the Post Office. This issue is rarely contested, except in exceptional cases.
Likewise, it is not difficult to meet the second criteria of showing the marriage is irretrievably broken. By the time you are consulting with an attorney and making a decision to file for divorce, both parties tend to agree on at least this point.
In the rare circumstance where one party doesn’t agree that the marriage is over, they can contest this point and the court will order the parties to participate in conciliation services.
This is a service provided by the court to attempt to resolve your differences and see if further counseling may provide a future together.
If there is any chance of saving your marriage, we recommend you make every effort to attempt restoration and we can make a private and confident referral to great family & marriage therapists who specialize in just that thing.
The divorce process in Arizona takes a minimum of 60 days to complete. From the day you file your first papers, the court will not issue a final “Decree” until 60 days later even if you both agree on everything, have a signed agreement on all the issues, and come to court together to file the papers. The court will still way 60 days. The court will also wait the full 60 days if the other party fails to respond at all and you are entitled to obtain a Default Decree without their input. This 60 day period is commonly referred to as the “cooling off period” and was put in place to discourage people from rushing down to the court and getting divorced in the heat of a disagreement.
Though 60 days is the minimum amount of time that the process will take, it rarely happens that quickly. Even when a couple have all of their ducks in a row and files the paperwork on time, the court often falls behind and will take 3-6 months to finalize your paperwork. When some of the issues in a divorce are contested, the timeline will increase substantially.
When one of more of these issues is contested by the parties, you can expect the case to take 9-12 months to resolve. Resolution can come after a hard-fought litigated trial on all the issues, or it may come after a formal or informal settlement conference or mediation. Either way, contested issues require a much longer investment of your time.
Located in Chandler, Arizona, we handle family matters across the entire state including nearby Gilbert, Sun Lakes, Tempe, Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, and Apache Junction.
Learn more about typical divorce attorney fees and how Keystone is different.