How Do I Get a Divorce When I Can’t Find My Spouse?

How Do I Get a Divorce When I Can’t Find My Spouse?If you are married but don’t know where your spouse is we can still help you get divorced.

New York law requires that we serve your spouse the divorce documents so that he or she will have an opportunity to respond.

Although, obviously if you can’t find your spouse then serving them the documents is not possible.

In New York, if you can’t find your spouse to serve them the divorce paperwork, you need to do a Publication Divorce. A Publication Divorce is the only way to divorce a missing spouse.

So don’t worry – even if you can’t locate your spouse – we can still help!

We’ve helped many clients obtain divorces without their spouses’ signatures.  The only requirement for a unilateral divorce is that you must not know where your spouse is located.

If you don’t know where they are and we can’t find them, then we can help you get a divorce without your spouse’s signature. They don’t even need to be served for that matter.  The publication of the notice in the newspaper acts to put them on notice.  Pretty cool, huh?  More about this later…

What is a Publication Divorce Anyway?

In short, a New York Publication Divorce is when the Court allows us to publish a legal notice in the newspaper to put your spouse on notice of the fact that you’ve filed for divorce.

This is known as a “legal fiction” or “constructive notice” because the chances that your spouse will read that specific newspapers is one in a billion.

Even though this seems ridiculous to you and me both, this is the law.  We have to work with the law in order to get you divorced.