Filing an uncontested divorce in Long Beach

Every Long Beach zip code files at the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse

The Superior Court of California, County of Los Angeles publishes a Filing Court Locator that takes two entries and nothing more, a city or community and a zip code, with the instruction to enter one, the other or both and click search. On October 18, 2026 the locator was asked about Long Beach zip by zip. Its results page, which prints a Family Law column beside the Unlimited Civil, Restraining Orders and Probate columns, answered as follows:

• LONG BEACH (90802): Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse in the Family Law column, and the same courthouse in the Unlimited Civil and Restraining Orders columns.
• LONG BEACH (90805): Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse, again in all three columns. The same zip returns a second row, NORTH LONG BEACH (90805), with the same Family Law answer.
• LONG BEACH (90813): Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse, all three columns.
• A query for the city alone, with no zip, returns every Long Beach zip the locator carries, 90801 through 90840, and each row names the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse for Family Law. Two rows are labelled by community rather than by city: BIXBY KNOLLS (North of E. San Antonio Dr. and East of Long Beach Blvd.) (90807) and CALIF. STATE UNIV. LONG BEACH (90840).

The locator's own caveats, and what they mean for a Long Beach address

The locator prints its caveats on both of its pages, and they apply to Long Beach as to anywhere in the county. On the search page the court warns that a mailing address may not be a proper indicator of true geographic location, and points to Chapter 2 of its Local Rules for the criteria by which cases are assigned to court locations. It adds that adjustments in caseload distributions in the San Fernando Valley and East Los Angeles areas, and in the North Central District, may require a case to go to a different district than the one shown. On the results page the court says the location shown will normally be the location where a case from the selected zip code and community would be assigned, unless Local Rule 2.0 specifies a different location, and that where a street forms the boundary of a district, the boundary of the district is the centerline of that street. The Bixby Knolls row, which the locator defines by East San Antonio Drive and Long Beach Boulevard, is an example of a community the court describes by its streets rather than by a zip alone.

The locator's search page also notes that family cases are treated as unlimited civil cases for the purpose of assignment. For some cities that produces two different answers in the two columns, and a family law petition follows the Family Law column. Torrance zips return Torrance Courthouse or Inglewood Courthouse for unlimited civil and Torrance Courthouse alone for family law; Norwalk zips return Norwalk Courthouse for unlimited civil and Whittier Courthouse for family law; Burbank and Glendale zips return a four-courthouse unlimited civil answer and Pasadena Courthouse for family law. Long Beach's rows show the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse in the Family Law, Unlimited Civil and Restraining Orders columns alike, for 90802, 90805 and 90813, so for those zip codes the column makes no difference to the answer.

The court's other documents point the same way from their own directions. Local Rule 2.2(b), which lists where sessions of the court are held in each of its twelve districts, lists the courthouse at 275 Magnolia, Long Beach 90802, as a South District location and spells it Governor George Deukmajian Courthouse where the court's directory and courthouse page spell it Deukmejian. The Family Law Departments Directory effective October 1, 2026 lists fourteen locations with family law departments and places one of them under the South District heading, 275 Magnolia Ave., Long Beach. The clerk's appointment scheduler lists the courthouse with the code FL among its appointment types, the e-filing General Order gives it a family law notification account of its own, and the court's Self-Help Center Locations document lists Long Beach among the centers that assist with family law cases.

The courthouse serves beyond the city line. The locator returns the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse for LOS ANGELES (90731), the San Pedro zip, in its Family Law column, so a spouse who lives in San Pedro and a spouse who lives in Long Beach are assigned to the same courthouse. The locator was not asked about every community around Long Beach on October 18, 2026, and this page reports only the rows it returned. Your intake records the courthouse the locator named for your address, and the attorney goes over it with you before any petition is written; for a Long Beach address that answer is the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse, and the petition and each document after it carry that courthouse in the caption.

Local Rule 2.3: the South District or the Central District, and the two Los Angeles cover sheets

The Local Rules the court serves as its current rules are footed Local Rules, Effective January 1, 2022 on every page of chapters 2 and 5, and rule 2.3 carries an amendment history that ends with amended and effective July 1, 2018. Rule 2.3(a)(1)(B) is the filing rule for a divorce: an unlimited civil or Family Code action may be filed in the Central District or may be filed in a district other than the Central District, and the rule's list of optional filings puts family law, all matters under the Family Code, where one or more of the parties litigant reside. For a Long Beach resident that means two lawful places to file: the South District, whose courthouse is the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse, or the Central District, whose family law courthouse is the Stanley Mosk Courthouse at 111 North Hill Street, Los Angeles 90012. The rule also allows the district where the other spouse lives, if that is a different one; a Long Beach spouse and a Torrance spouse, for example, may file in the South District, the Southwest District or Central.

Rule 2.3(a)(1)(D) narrows the choice for family law in nine zip codes only: 91301, 91302, 91303, 91304, 91306, 91307, 91326, 91361 and 91367, family law matters from which must be filed in Central or the North Valley District rather than the Northwest District. No Long Beach zip is on that list, so it has no bearing on a Long Beach filing. Rule 2.11 states that Family Law Division courts are direct calendar courts, which means one judicial officer for all purposes, so a case assigned to a department at the Long Beach courthouse stays with that department. Rule 2.3(b)(4) gives the Family Law Supervising Judge the power to transfer a family law case from one district to another and requires a motion to transfer to be made in Department 2 in the Central District.

Two local forms go with the first paper in this county. Rule 2.3(a)(1)(E) requires every action presented for filing in any district to be accompanied by the Civil Case Cover Sheet Addendum and Statement of Location, form LACIV 109, signed by the self-represented plaintiff where there is no counsel. Rule 5.2 requires the first paper filed by the person who starts a family law action to be accompanied by a Family Law Case Cover Sheet, form FAM020. The office prepares every document, and those two are among the documents prepared for a Long Beach filing.

If you choose the Central District instead of Long Beach, one notice from the court's courthouse directory applies to you: "Stanley Mosk Courthouse Renumbering: Beginning May 4, 2026, the Superior Court of Los Angeles County will introduce a new department (courtroom) numbering system at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse." A department number in older material for that courthouse may not match. The notice does not mention the Long Beach courthouse, whose departments are listed in the next section as the directory effective October 1, 2026 prints them.

The courthouse at 275 Magnolia: hours, telephone, parking, offices and departments

The court's directory of courthouses, read in a browser on October 18, 2026, gives the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse at 275 Magnolia, Long Beach, CA 90802. Under Building Hours the page states that the courthouse opens at 8:00 a.m. and the Clerk's Office at 8:30 a.m., both closing at 4:30 p.m., on Monday through Friday other than court holidays. Its telephone number is (562) 256-3100, the same number the Judicial Council's self-help center finder lists for the courthouse. On parking the page says that public parking is available for a fee in the parking structure located at 101 S. Magnolia Ave. The page makes no other parking statement, and this page repeats none.

The page's General Directory names the offices in the building. Those that bear on a family law case are the Family Law Clerk's Office, the Family Law Facilitator Office, Family Court Services - Evaluation, Family Court Services - Mediation, a Financial Evaluator and a Children's Waiting Room; the building also houses civil, criminal, small claims, traffic and unlawful detainer offices. The directory shows each office by name, and the room numbers and hours for each office sit behind entries that were not expanded, so this page states none of them except the self-help room that the court's Self-Help Center Locations document gives.

The Family Law Departments Directory effective October 1, 2026, revised October 1, 2026 and amended October 7, 2026, lists the courthouse under the heading SOUTH DISTRICT, at 275 Magnolia Ave., Long Beach, CA 90802, with five family law departments. The directory prints a judicial officer and a telephone number for each; this page prints the department numbers only, and the directory itself is the place to read the current assignment.

• Department S10, Restraining Orders.
• Department S11, Restraining Orders.
• Department S14, General Family Law.
• Department S15, General Family Law.
• Department S16, General Family Law.

Self-help inside the Long Beach courthouse

The court's Self-Help Center Locations document, revised October 6, 2025, lists the Long Beach center at 275 Magnolia Avenue, 3rd Floor, Room 3101, Long Beach, CA 90802. It describes the centers as assisting individuals who need to proceed on their own without an attorney, with in-person services for protective restraining orders, family law cases, eviction answers and CARE petitions, and prints the hours for the family law centers: from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Monday through Thursday, and from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Friday. The same document gives the Self-Help Call Center at (213) 830-0845, Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Long Beach is among the centers that take family law cases; the document marks the Inglewood and Santa Monica centers as offering no family law assistance and the Norwalk center as CARE assistance only.

The court's self-help site describes walk-in assistance as available on a first come, first served basis and subject to availability, with the note that spaces fill up quickly, and says of the centers that they can help you complete your court forms and educate you about court procedures but do not provide legal advice. The Judicial Council's self-help finder, queried for Los Angeles, lists the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse at (562) 256-3100 and points to the court's self-help website; its hours field for the entry is blank. The Judicial Council's page on court-based self-help says that every superior court in California has free legal help available in family law and in small claims cases.

The Family Law Facilitator Office that the courthouse page lists is a separate service. On the court's facilitator page its work is described as assisting self-represented parties with three subjects, child support, spousal support and health insurance, and the page adds that the staff gives no legal advice and represents no one in a case or at a hearing. Local Rule 5.23 sets the facilitator's duties: meeting with litigants to mediate issues of child support, spousal support and maintenance of health insurance, preparing stipulations, giving advice to the court, and preparing orders where both parties are self-represented. A case within the flat fee has no minor children, and spousal support is dealt with in the written agreement; the office is named here so that a Long Beach reader knows what it is for. The facilitator page's tab for office hours and locations loads by script and could not be read, so no hours are given here for the Long Beach facilitator office.

The court publishes its own fillable judgment packets for an uncontested divorce: the Uncontested (Stipulated) Divorce Judgment Forms Packet without Minor Children, revised May 2025, and a companion packet with minor children. The packet's eligibility statement is that you and your spouse or partner must agree on all issues of the case, and its completion sheet asks, for the caption, what courthouse the case was filed in, noting that this may be different than the courthouse where a trial was held; for a Long Beach case filed at Long Beach the answer is the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse. The court's self-help site also lists a three-part divorce workshop series, the third part of which is for the person who filed the petition and is completing a default judgment to finish the case. The packet and the workshops are described so that you know what the court itself offers.

Outside the flat fee, in Long Beach as in the rest of the county: a case with minor children, a contested case, a business, a pension that needs its own order, real property outside California, a legal separation or an annulment, and a spouse who cannot be found. The Los Angeles County Bar Association Lawyer Referral and Information Service, at 213-243-1525, can refer you to a family law attorney.

E-filing from Long Beach, and the courthouse notification account

The court's General Order 2022-GEN-009-00, In re Mandatory Electronic Filing for Family Law, dated April 13, 2022, governs e-filing of a Long Beach petition. It recites that effective November 15, 2021 the court mandated electronic filing of all documents filed in family law cases by litigants represented by attorneys, and its section 3(a) states that self-represented litigants are exempt from mandatory electronic filing requirements. The attorney's role ends at preparing your documents and is never an appearance in the case, so the order treats you as self-represented: you may e-file through an electronic filing service provider, or file on paper.

If you e-file, the order's terms apply to the document itself. Section 6(a) requires electronic documents to be filed in PDF, text searchable format. Section 6 requires the filer to redact confidential information, giving as its examples initials for the names of minors and the last four digits of a social security number. Under section 7(a), a document the court receives electronically at any time from 12:00 a.m. to 11:59:59 p.m. on a court day counts as filed that day, provided it is accepted. Section 12 requires fees and costs associated with electronic filing to be waived for a litigant who holds a fee waiver. The order's preamble records that proposed judgments and proposed qualified domestic relations orders were removed from the list of exempt filings effective April 18, 2022, which binds a represented party who must e-file; a self-represented filer remains exempt from mandatory e-filing.

Section 5(b) of the order assigns a family law e-filing notification account to each family law courthouse and says court-generated documents will be served via email resource account to the email address registered with the provider. The account for this courthouse is listed as Long Beach Courthouse: LB-FLNotification@lacourt.org. The order lists no account for the Norwalk, Burbank, Glendale, Alhambra or Metropolitan courthouses, one more sign of where family law cases are kept and where they are not.

The court also offers clerk's office appointments online, on a page headed Schedule Appointment with Clerk's Office that asks the user to select a courthouse and an appointment type. The Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse is listed with the codes CIV CRM FL JVJUS SMCL TR, so FL is among the appointment types offered there; the page does not define the code, and this page does not define it either. The Glendale, Burbank, Alhambra, Norwalk, Inglewood and Metropolitan courthouses carry no FL code on the scheduler.

On drop boxes the court publishes one statement, in Local Rule 5.3(a)(2)(B), and it concerns ex parte applications only: the papers may be presented to the Clerk's Office of the district courthouse to which the case is assigned through the Clerk's Office's resource account, by fax filing, by drop-box filing or by physical delivery, with an advance appointment necessary for physical delivery. That is the only drop-box statement found on the court's site on October 18, 2026, and this page does not extend it to a petition or a judgment packet. Your filing instructions name the courthouse and the method the attorney has reviewed for your case.

The judgment packet when the case is assigned to Long Beach

The rules for a judgment packet are county-wide, and they attach to the Long Beach courthouse because the case is assigned there. Local Rule 5.3 speaks of the Clerk's Office of the district courthouse to which the case is assigned, and the court's own uncontested judgment packet asks what courthouse the case was filed in so that the caption matches. No court page read on October 18, 2026 says anything about judgment packets that is particular to Long Beach, and this page reports nothing of the kind.

Local Rule 5.17 lists what a judgment submission contains. Its list begins with the Declaration for Default or Uncontested Dissolution and the Request for Default or the Appearance, Stipulation and Waiver form, whichever applies, and continues to an original and three copies of the judgment, of which the court retains the original and one copy, and two self-addressed, stamped envelopes with the court's address as the return address. The rule names the issues that require a hearing absent a written agreement, which is why the written agreement in an uncontested case carries the weight it does; it states that filing fees will not be required from a defaulting party that has signed a judgment, and that the signature of the defaulting party must be notarized. The office does not provide a notary, so a spouse who signs the judgment without filing a response arranges that signature where they choose. Reserved issues settled later by stipulation may also go to the court without anyone appearing, under rule 5.16(b).

Statewide law stands behind those rules. Family Code section 2336 and California Rules of Court, rule 5.409 allow a judgment to be entered on declarations without a hearing, and Family Code section 2104 requires the preliminary declaration of disclosure to be served on the other spouse, not filed. The court's own Divorce Overview chart, dated June 2011 and still linked from its self-help site, says the same in two sentences: the preliminary and final declarations of disclosure are not filed with the court but are served on the other spouse, and in a small number of complex situations a hearing is required even for a default divorce. If a hearing is ever set in a Long Beach case, the court's Family Law Division page says that in all family law departments and hearing types the court has remote video and audio courtroom appearance technology via LACourtConnect; the office does not appear at hearings.

What the office does for a Long Beach filing, and the rules that do not change with the courthouse

Law Offices of Rozsa Gyene prepares and reviews every document for a flat fee in a limited scope engagement under California Rules of Court, rule 5.425: $599 for a summary dissolution, $999 for a joint petition and $1,499 for an ordinary petition. The documents reach you with written filing instructions for the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse, reviewed by the attorney before they are released, and you file them yourself. The office does not file, does not serve, does not appear in court, does not provide a notary, and does not prepare or record a deed; where the agreement calls for a deed, a title company or another attorney prepares and records it. The fee includes one revision round of the settlement agreement and the first correction of a judgment packet the court returns; a further round is quoted before any work on it begins. The fee is earned in stages; should the representation end early, whatever part has not been earned is refunded.

One spouse is the office's client, and only one. Your spouse is not a client of the office and receives no advice from it, and is free to consult an attorney of their own choosing. In Los Angeles County the intake asks which courthouse the locator returns for your address, and the attorney confirms that courthouse with you before the petition is prepared; for a Long Beach address it is the Governor George Deukmejian Courthouse. For the fee amounts, see the county page; the one fee point for this page is that a joint petition pays both first-paper fees under Family Code section 2342.5(h), $870, which the Judicial Council's Statewide Civil Fee Schedule effective January 1, 2026 lists at item 99.

Three statewide rules are the same at every courthouse. Before a Long Beach petition is filed, one spouse must have lived six months in California and three months in Los Angeles County (Family Code section 2320); the city within the county does not enter into it. Family Code section 2339 provides that the marriage ends no sooner than six months after the other spouse is served or appears, form FL-107-INFO puts the earliest date at six months and one day, and section 2340 requires the judgment to state the date the marriage ends; filing at Long Beach rather than downtown, e-filing, or an appointment with the clerk does nothing to shorten that period.

Rozsa Gyene, State Bar of California No. 208356, 3500 W. Olive Ave., Suite 300, Burbank, CA 91505.