California is not a "fault" state. You will not need to prove that anyone behaved badly. You will not be asked to produce evidence of an affair, a betrayal, or a slow drift apart. You only need to say — under oath, on a form — that there are irreconcilable differences, and California will accept that. This single decision, made by the legislature in 1969, is the most important thing to understand about California divorce. It changes who has leverage, what your lawyer fights about, and how the case actually moves.
Once you understand that, four other ideas do most of the rest of the work: community property, the residency requirement, the six-month waiting period, and the difference between legal and physical custody. We'll walk through each.
§ 01No-fault, and what that actually means
The technical phrase is "irreconcilable differences which have caused the irremediable breakdown of the marriage" — Family Code section 2310. In practice, you check a box. Your spouse cannot prevent the divorce by refusing to agree, and a judge will not weigh whose fault it was when dividing property or setting support.
The second statutory ground, "permanent legal incapacity to make decisions," exists for the rare case where a spouse is incapacitated. Almost no one uses it.
People sometimes assume that because California is no-fault, behavior never matters. It does — just in narrower ways. Domestic violence affects custody and can affect support. Wasting community money on an affair (the technical term is "breach of fiduciary duty") can affect property division. But ordinary unhappiness, ordinary unfaithfulness, and ordinary disagreement do not.
§ 02Community property, in one sentence
Anything you or your spouse earned or acquired during the marriage — from the day you said "I do" to the date of separation — is presumed to belong equally to both of you, regardless of whose name is on it. That includes paychecks, retirement contributions, the equity that built up in a house, the value a business gained, and the debts either of you took on.
Anything owned before the marriage, or received during the marriage as a gift or inheritance to one spouse alone, stays separate property. So does anything traceable to that pre-marriage source — money in an account that's been kept apart, a stock holding that hasn't been mixed with marital funds.
That sentence is the rule. Almost everything in property division is the rule running into reality: a pre-marriage house that was paid down with marital paychecks, a separate-property account that received deposits during the marriage, a business one spouse founded but the other helped grow. We give those problems their own chapter.
Read more about property division →
§ 03Residency: who can file in California
To file for divorce in California, at least one spouse must have lived in the state for the past six months and in the county where the case is filed for the past three months. These periods don't have to overlap — what counts is the moment of filing.
If you've recently moved to California from another state, you'll need to wait. If you've been here long enough but your spouse lives elsewhere, you can still file in California, though serving an out-of-state spouse adds wrinkles. If neither of you meets the residency requirement, a related option called a legal separation doesn't have a residency requirement, and many people file for legal separation first and convert it to a divorce later.
§ 04The six-month waiting period
This is the rule that most surprises people. From the date your spouse is served with the divorce papers (or files a response, whichever comes first), California requires a minimum of six months and one day before the divorce can become final.
You cannot waive this. You cannot speed it up by being agreeable, by hiring an expensive lawyer, or by skipping conflict. Even an entirely uncontested divorce — where both spouses agree on everything from the first day — takes at least six months to finalize.
The six months is a minimum, not an estimate. The actual time most divorces take is significantly longer — often 9 to 18 months for an uncontested case, and several years for contested ones. The six-month clock is just the earliest the court will sign a judgment.
§ 05Legal vs. physical custody
California separates two things most people lump together. Legal custody is the right to make important decisions about a child — schools, medical care, religion. Physical custody is who the child lives with, and when.
Either kind can be sole or joint. The most common outcome is joint legal custody (both parents make major decisions together) with some form of physical custody arrangement that reflects the realities of work, geography, and the child's age. The default presumption — though it is not a hard rule — is that frequent and continuing contact with both parents serves a child's best interests.
Read more about custody and child support →
§ 06Spousal support, briefly
California has two distinct kinds of spousal support. Temporary support is paid while a case is pending, usually calculated by a county-specific formula. Long-term support kicks in at the judgment, and is set by a judge weighing fourteen factors listed in Family Code section 4320 — earning capacity, the marital standard of living, the length of the marriage, and others.
The most-quoted rule of thumb is that for marriages under ten years, support typically lasts about half the length of the marriage. For marriages of ten years or more — California's threshold for a "long-term marriage" — courts retain jurisdiction over support indefinitely, though that does not mean support continues forever.
Read more about spousal support →
§ 07What happens, in what order
The simplest version of the process looks like this:
- Petition is filed. One spouse (the petitioner) files Form FL-100 with the Superior Court in their county.
- The other spouse is served. Personal service is required; you cannot just hand the papers to your spouse yourself.
- Response is filed. The respondent has 30 days to file Form FL-120, or the petitioner can request a default.
- Disclosure. Both spouses exchange detailed financial information — the Income & Expense Declaration (FL-150) and Schedule of Assets and Debts (FL-142 or FL-160).
- Discovery, negotiation, mediation. Most cases settle here, often after months of back-and-forth.
- Judgment. Either by stipulation (you agreed) or after trial (you didn't), the court signs a judgment that ends the marriage and resolves everything else.
What this site is, and what it is not
DivorceTalk is a careful, plain-language guide to California family law. We've written it for people who are going through a divorce, considering one, or trying to understand what a friend or family member is facing. Our goal is to make the law legible — to explain what the rules actually say, and what they tend to mean in practice.
This is not legal advice. Every case is shaped by facts we cannot see from here: the assets involved, the relationship dynamics, the local court, the specific judge, your children's particular needs. For decisions that will affect your finances or your family for years, please find a licensed California family law attorney. We'll help you do that, too — see Resources.