Filing an uncontested divorce in Sonoma County

One courthouse for family law: Cleveland Avenue, Santa Rosa

Sonoma County has one superior court and one filing counter for a divorce. The court's How to File Documents page places the Family Law and Probate Clerk's Office at the Civil and Family Law Courthouse, 3055 Cleveland Avenue, Santa Rosa, CA 95403, and the Family Law Division page lists dissolution of marriage first among the matters the division processes, with legal separation and nullity beside it. The court's own instruction sheet for a petition says the same thing in one line: take an original and two copies of each document to the Family Law Clerk for filing. There is no second family law courthouse to be assigned to, so the question other counties answer with a zip code list or a venue declaration does not arise here. The Local Rules carry a rule 9.2 titled Case Assignment; its text is not described here.

The clerk's telephone number on the Family Law Division page is (707) 521-6630, with telephone hours of 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. The counter opens at 8:00 a.m. on weekdays. On the closing time the court's materials differ: the courthouse page and the Family Law Division page both give 3:30 p.m., while a court press release dated August 4, 2026 announces that from August 10, 2026 the Clerk's Office, including the Civil and Family Courthouse, is open to the public until 4:00 p.m. This page prints no closing time for that reason; read the court's current notice before an afternoon visit. The courthouse page gives the building's own hours as 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

A notice on the court's home page says that the clerk's offices of the Hall of Justice have moved to 625 Administration Drive. That notice lists the matters the Hall of Justice serves, criminal, traffic, collections, probate, records requests, jury services and juvenile dependency, and does not name family law. Family law filing stays at Cleveland Avenue on every court page read for this page, and your filing instructions name that address.

The court's fees, item by item

Sonoma's court does not publish a schedule of its own. Its Fee and Bail Schedules page links a copy of the Judicial Council's Statewide Civil Fee Schedule, and the Judicial Council's current edition, effective January 1, 2026, is the one this page relies on; both were read on October 18, 2026. The copy the court hosts is the edition effective January 1, 2024, which lists the same amounts for a dissolution at its items 96 and 97; the court's web page does not state the edition in its text; the date is inside the PDF. The current statewide schedule marks the fees that vary by county with an asterisk and says they vary only in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Francisco because of a local surcharge, so no surcharge is added in Sonoma County and the amount the schedule prints is the amount the clerk collects.

The court's own instruction sheets state the fee and name the fee waiver forms beside it, FW-001 and FW-003, so a filer sees both at once. The How to File Documents page lists the payment methods the counter takes as cash, check, cashier's check, money order, debit card and credit card, and the court's Family Law FAQs say a filing sent by mail or left in the drop box carries a check payable to Superior Court for any applicable filing fee. The items on the Judicial Council's schedule, effective January 1, 2026, that arise in an uncontested divorce:

• Item 97, the petition: the schedule describes it as a petition or other first paper for dissolution of marriage or domestic partnership, legal separation or nullity, $435, citing Government Code sections 70670(b), 70602.5 and 70602.6. The clerk collects it when the petition is filed.
• Item 98, the response: the schedule describes it as a response or other first paper filed in response to a petition for dissolution, $435, citing Government Code section 70670(d). It falls on your spouse only if a response or an appearance is filed.
• The schedule's asterisk: the two amounts above vary only in Riverside, San Bernardino and San Francisco. Sonoma County is not among them.
• Copies of the entered judgment where the postage you supplied runs short: the court's judgment checklists say that only the Notice of Entry of Judgment is mailed in that case and that further copies cost fifty cents a page.

How many first-paper fees each path pays here

An ordinary petition where your spouse signs the settlement agreement and files nothing pays item 97 once, $435. An ordinary petition where your spouse files a response, or an Appearance, Stipulations and Waivers (form FL-130), pays items 97 and 98, $870 between the two of you; the court's Checklist 3 for an agreed judgment lists the respondent's first-paper fee, or a fee waiver order in its place, among the things the packet must show. A joint petition under Family Code section 2342.5 pays both first-paper fees as well, $870, because section 2342.5(h) provides that the joint petition is filed with the fees under Government Code section 70670(b) and (d) unless both spouses have fee waivers. A summary dissolution under Family Code sections 2400 to 2403, filed on the court's Summary Dissolution Packet forms (among them FL-800, FL-810, FL-825 and FL-830, with the court's FLIN-20 information sheet), pays one first-paper fee, $435. The joint petition changes who signs the petition and what is served; it does not reduce what the clerk collects.

The fee paid to Law Offices of Rozsa Gyene is separate from all of that and is a flat fee: $599 for a summary dissolution, $999 for a joint petition and $1,499 for an ordinary petition. It pays for the preparation and attorney review of every document in a limited scope engagement under California Rules of Court, rule 5.425, written filing instructions for Sonoma County reviewed by the attorney before they are released, one revision round of the settlement agreement and the first correction of a judgment packet the court returns. Should the agreement need a further revision round, the office quotes it before beginning that work. The fee is earned in stages; if the representation ends early, the unearned part is refunded.

The office does not file your documents, does not serve your spouse, does not appear in court, does not provide a notary and does not prepare or record deeds. You file at Cleveland Avenue, or electronically, as a self-represented litigant holding the attorney's written instructions. The office represents one spouse only; the other spouse is not a client of this office in the divorce, is not advised by it, and may consult an attorney of their own choosing.

If you cannot afford the fee

The court's fee waiver page is a packet under its Local Forms Packets, titled for family law and civil cases, and it lists three Judicial Council forms: the information sheet FW-001-INFO, the Request to Waive Court Fees (form FW-001) and the Order on Court Fee Waiver (form FW-003). The How to File Documents page says a fee waiver application can be filed together with your documents if you cannot afford the fee, and the court's petition instruction sheet names the same two forms next to the fee. The law behind the forms is Government Code sections 68630 to 68634: the court waives its fees for a person receiving a listed public benefit, a person whose household income is at or below the Judicial Council's published limit, or a person who cannot pay the fee and still meet the household's basic needs, and the clerk files the petition while the request is pending.

Two local points matter. First, when a fee waiver is e-filed, the court's E-Filing page requires the FW-001 to be submitted in the same transaction as the filing it covers, as the lead or first document, and it says each party needs a separate FW-001 and FW-003, including married couples filing as separate parties. One request does not cover both spouses, which is why section 2342.5(h) speaks of both spouses holding waivers on a joint petition. Second, Local Rule 17.1, Proceedings With a Fee Waiver, states how the court reads the reasonably necessary copying a waiver covers, so a waiver does not mean unlimited free copies at the counter.

A waiver reaches the court's fees only. The E-Filing page answers a common question directly: electronic filing service provider fees are not court fees and are not waived by the court's order, and a filer asks the provider about its own policy. The office's flat fee is likewise untouched by a waiver. The office prepares the request and the order form as part of the flat fee when you ask for them, and the page on the court fee waiver explains the forms in detail.

E-filing: mandatory for attorneys, optional for you

Local Rule 17.22, Mandatory Electronic Filing, lists all family law matters among the case types where represented parties and attorneys must e-file, and its subdivision B exempts self-represented parties under California Rules of Court, rule 2.253(b)(2). The court's E-Filing page repeats the exemption in the same words. Because the attorney prepares your documents in a limited scope engagement and does not appear in your case, you file as a self-represented litigant, and the mandate does not reach you. The How to File Documents page lists the ways a document may be submitted, online, by mail, by drop box and in person, and the Family Law FAQs list the same four, so the choice is yours.

If you choose to e-file, the E-Filing page sends you to the Odyssey eFileCA portal and tells you to contact your electronic filing service provider about its fee, adding that each provider charges one, with a 2.75 percent card processing fee on top. Local Rule 17.24 says the court's approved providers are listed on its website, but the E-Filing page read for this page names only the portal, so your filing instructions do not name a provider. The court keeps a voicemail line for e-filing questions at (707) 521-1050. Local Rule 17.25 governs the date and time an e-filed document is treated as filed.

Three family law documents cannot be e-filed in Sonoma County. Local Rule 17.23, Limitations on Electronic Filings, subdivision D, names them: the Declaration for Default or Uncontested Judgment, judgments, and the Notice of Entry of Judgment, and the E-Filing page lists the same three. Those are the heart of the judgment packet, so even a case that begins electronically finishes on paper at the clerk's counter, in the drop box or by mail. The office's instructions say which documents may go electronically and which must not.

For paper filing the court gives three routes. In person at the Family Law and Probate Clerk's Office; the How to File Documents page recommends that route for a self-represented person with a deadline, because a filing the clerk rejects can be corrected on the spot. By drop box, a wall-mounted box to the left of the courthouse entrance at 3055 Cleveland Avenue, with the documents in a large envelope. Or by mail to the Family Law and Probate Clerk's Office at that address. For drop box and mail the court asks for an original and two copies of each document and a self-addressed stamped envelope so that your endorsed copies come back to you. Those three routes carry your judgment packet too.

Local rules and the court's packets

The Local Rules of Court in force are the edition effective July 1, 2026, linked from the court's Local Rules page. Rule 9 is titled Rules Applicable to Family Law Proceedings. The parts an uncontested divorce meets are rule 9.2 on case assignment, rule 9.4 on the Family Law Facilitator, rule 9.7 on handwritten pleadings, rule 9.9 on documents not to be filed, rule 9.10 on case management conferences, rule 9.17 on orders after hearing, rule 9.26 on judgments and rule 9.27 on service by posting. Rule 9.6, Appearance by Telephone, was repealed effective July 1, 2026. Rule 17, Rules Applicable to Filing and General Procedure, applies to family law by its own terms; its rules 17.1 and 17.22 to 17.25 are the ones described above.

Two small rules save a filer trouble. Rule 9.9 says that in family law cases notices of unavailability are not filed with the court, so none is prepared. Rule 9.7 accepts handwritten pleadings, and the court's Getting Started Information Sheet, FLIN-1, adds that hand-printed forms in blue or black ink are accepted if the clerk can read them; the office's documents are typed, so the rule is mentioned only so that a correction made in ink at the counter does not alarm you. A document that is not a Judicial Council form, such as a settlement agreement, must follow California Rules of Court, rule 2.111, and the court posts a pleading paper template for the purpose; the office prepares the agreement to that rule.

The court's instruction sheets and forms pages read for this page list no local form with the petition. The court's Step One packet on its dissolution forms page is Judicial Council forms, beginning with the Petition (form FL-100), together with the FLIN-1 information sheet. The court's Local Forms page lists family law forms of its own, a Stipulation and Order (FL014), a Request to Drop Hearing (FL042) and a Case Management Conference Request (FL092) among them, but none of them is listed as a requirement for a petition or a judgment. The FLIN-1 sheet also states the disclosure timetable: within sixty days of filing the petition you serve your Declaration of Disclosure, and only the Declaration Regarding Service of Declaration of Disclosure (form FL-141) is filed, never the FL-140, FL-142 or FL-150 themselves. Family Code section 2104 requires the preliminary disclosure, and the court's FAQs say it cannot be waived even where there are no assets and the spouses agree.

The court's Step Two packets match the two ways an uncontested case ends. Where no response is filed, the default packet is the FLIN-2B information sheet with the Request to Enter Default (FL-165), the Declaration for Default or Uncontested Dissolution (FL-170), the Judgment (FL-180) and the Notice of Entry of Judgment (FL-190), with FL-150, FL-160, FL-142, FL-345 and FL-144 as the case needs them. Where a response or an appearance is filed, the agreement packet is the FLIN-2A sheet with the Appearance, Stipulations and Waivers (FL-130), FL-141, FL-144, FL-170 and FL-180. The office prepares the forms your case needs from these lists, completed and reviewed, rather than handing you the court's packet.

The judgment packet in Sonoma County: Local Rule 9.26 and the checklist

Sonoma County adds one requirement of its own to the judgment. Local Rule 9.26.B says the appropriate completed checklist must be submitted with the necessary documents, and that judgments submitted without a completed checklist will be returned. The checklists, numbered 1 through 16, are on the court's Family Law Judgment Check List page. Three concern an uncontested divorce: Checklist 1, default without agreement; Checklist 2, default with agreement; and Checklist 3, appearance, stipulation and waiver with an agreement. Checklist 13 covers a summary dissolution judgment. California Rules of Court, rule 5.405 limits what a court may demand to the Judicial Council's Judgment Checklist (form FL-182); the Sonoma checklist is the court's working copy of the same review, and the office completes the one your case calls for and places it on top of the packet.

Rule 9.26.A describes what happens next: a clerk processes the packet for a judge or commissioner, who may sign the judgment, suspend it pending further documents, reject it, or set a hearing. The checklists tell you what to supply so that the first of those happens: two envelopes with postage, one addressed to each party, for mailing the Notice of Entry of Judgment (form FL-190), and one large self-addressed stamped envelope for the return of every other endorsed copy. If the postage is insufficient, only the FL-190 is mailed and further copies cost fifty cents a page. California Rules of Court, rule 5.415 is the statewide source of the envelope requirement, and rule 5.411 governs the stipulated judgment the agreement path produces.

Checklist 3 is specific about the agreement path. The FL-130 is required, and the checklist notes it may stand in place of a Response (form FL-120); the respondent's first-paper fee or fee waiver order must appear; both parties sign the judgment; a property order attachment or a marital settlement agreement is required when community property is listed; and where there are minor children a court-approved support calculation is attached, which is one of several reasons a case with minor children is outside the flat fee. Checklist 1 and Checklist 3 both ask the reviewer to confirm the date marital status ends, a minimum of six months and one day from the jurisdiction date under Family Code section 2339, and they say that a date already passed, without a nunc pro tunc declaration, is struck so that status ends on the date of entry. The office dates the judgment to that rule.

A judgment packet cannot be e-filed here, as Local Rule 17.23.D provides, so it goes to the counter, the drop box or the mail, with an original and two copies of each document. Checklist 1 records how a packet that is not accepted returns to the petitioner: by U.S. mail if sufficient postage was provided, or through the court's Document Pickup Drawer at the courthouse. The first correction of a packet the court returns is included in the flat fee, and your instructions tell you which route carries the corrected packet back.

Appearing remotely, if a hearing is ever set

An uncontested divorce on a written agreement needs no hearing in Sonoma County. Family Code section 2336 and rule 5.409 allow the court to enter the judgment on your declaration without a hearing, and rule 9.26.A lists a hearing only as one of four things the judicial officer may do with a packet. If one is set, the court's Family Law Calendar page, headed Zoom Information for Remote Appearances, publishes a Zoom meeting ID and password for each of the family law departments it lists, D20 through D23, with a telephone dial-in beside them, and the Family Law FAQs confirm that a remote hearing can be joined from any telephone, including a landline. The same page says you are encouraged to appear in person in the courtroom, and offers the remote route to a person who cannot. Local Rule 9.6 on telephone appearances was repealed on July 1, 2026, and the court has no separate remote appearance page; the calendar page is where the arrangements live. The office does not appear at a hearing; if the court sets one, the Zoom details on the calendar page and your instructions say what the court has asked for.

The Family Law Facilitator and Self-Help Center

The court's self-help service for family law is the Family Law Facilitator and Self-Help Center, in the same building as the clerk at 3055 Cleveland Avenue, Santa Rosa, with office hours of 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Its page describes the service as free legal information and procedural help for people without lawyers in family law, guardianship and limited conservatorship cases. Divorce is on the list of matters it helps with, as are legal separation, spousal support, simple property division, and judgments and orders after hearing where both parties are self-represented, with no status-only judgments. It does not help with complex property division, orders dividing a pension, discovery, or any case where the person has a lawyer. Local Rule 9.4.B.2 adds that the Facilitator drafts stipulations and stipulated judgments on family law issues where neither party is represented by an attorney.

The Center works by appointment for information, forms, instructions and form review, Monday through Thursday from 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. and from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m., by telephone, by video or in person. Walk-in help on the same days, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. with a ticket from the kiosk before 11:00 a.m., is reserved for emergency orders, responses to a summons and continuances. Computer reservations keep the appointment hours, an e-mail portal takes brief questions and answers them within three business days, and children are not allowed in the Center. The Center's page lists no telephone number for itself; contact is through its appointment link and its e-mail portal, and this page prints no number for that reason.

The Center says its staff are neutral court employees and that they can help the opposing party in your case, so what you say there is not confidential and the Center is not your lawyer. The court's wider Self-Help page offers free help to the public in other case types through a separate civil self-help center, and the Family Law FAQs send divorce questions on to the Judicial Council's Divorce in California guide. The office's documents are prepared so that you can file them without the Center's help; your portal and the office are where your questions go first, and the court's staff answer the questions about a clerk's practice on the day that no outside office can.

A case with minor children, a contested case, a business, a pension that needs its own order, real property outside California, a legal separation, an annulment, or a spouse who cannot be found is outside the flat fee. The State Bar of California's Lawyer Referral Service directory, at calbar.ca.gov/Public/Need-Legal-Help/Lawyer-Referral-Service, lists the certified lawyer referral services for every county.

After the judgment, in this county

The court's Family Law FAQs state the rule every filer needs to hear: you are not divorced or legally separated until a Judgment of Dissolution or Judgment of Legal Separation is signed by a judge and filed in your case. The six months of Family Code section 2339 run from the day your spouse is served or appears, the earliest end date is six months and one day later, as form FL-107-INFO counts it and as the court's own checklists count it, and the judgment states the date your marriage ends (section 2340). Nothing filed in Sonoma County shortens that period, and a petition filed early does not start it.

When the judgment is entered, the clerk mails the Notice of Entry of Judgment to each spouse in the two envelopes your packet supplied, and returns the other endorsed copies in the large one. Keep the endorsed judgment; it is the document an agency asks for. The court's FAQs also note that a late response can be filed only while no Request to Enter Default (form FL-165) is on file, which is why the default path moves in the order your instructions give. Because the office does not prepare or record deeds, any transfer of California real property the agreement calls for is handled separately once the judgment is entered. The residence rule is Family Code section 2320: six months in California and three months in Sonoma County before the petition is filed here.

Every source below was read on October 18, 2026. Each address, hour, fee item, rule number and form number on this page comes from one of them, and anything the court's materials did not confirm, including the clerk's closing time and a telephone number for the Facilitator, is left off the page rather than guessed.

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