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To start the divorce process, the very first thing you need to do is file a petition for divorce and a notice with the court. These forms allow the court to open the divorce case. And, in some cases, courts want you to file a protected info disclosure too - but whether or not you need to do that depends on which state you live in.
Divorce proceedings pretty much require that you serve those divorce papers (the petition, notice, and protected info disclosure) on your spouse, who didn't file - and that usually involves hiring a process server or going through the local sheriff's department. But if you can't figure out where your ex is, or if they've moved without leaving a forwarding address, serving the divorce papers will be a real challenge.
In some cases, private investigators may be able to track down the missing spouse, but if they can't, then you'll need to use some other method to serve the papers. And even with that, you may need to try a few times to get approval for an alternative service method - and then there's the fact that some states set a pretty tight time limit - 60 to 120 days - from when you first file to when you need to have served the divorce papers. If you don't make any efforts to serve your spouse by that point, the court will likely dismiss your case.
But there is another way to serve notice of divorce proceedings - known as service by publication, where you run a notice in a newspaper. And in some cases, courts will also let you serve your spouse via email or other digital means - but you need to get the court's permission first. After you've published the notice or actually served your spouse, if you don't get any response at all, then you can ask the court to just go ahead and grant a default divorce.
Most places give the other party 20-30 days to respond after being served. If they don't respond after that time, you can then file with the court asking for a default, along with proof of your attempts to serve the other party.
And in many cases, a default divorce can be granted even if the other party never shows up, including custody orders, child support, property division, and all that other important stuff. Some courts may need to hold a hearing to confirm the requests you made in your petition, so the other party still has one last chance to show up before a default is entered.
But default divorces can sometimes get challenged by the other party if they think that the efforts to serve them were somehow unfair or that they had some kind of good reason for not responding, like they were out of the country, stuck in a hospital, or something. If that happens, the court will reopen the case and may even set aside the default divorce decree until both parties get to present their evidence in court.
All in all, the key to getting your divorce is making good-faith efforts to serve your spouse with divorce papers, keeping track of all your attempts, and really paying attention to how much time has passed after every step in the process.
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