What Is a Default Divorce and How Does It Occur?

A default divorce is a divorce where you file a petition for divorce, you have served the opposing party, which would be the respondent, your spouse, and that spouse failed to answer.

Now, initially, anybody that served a civil lawsuit in the state of Texas generally has the Monday following the expiration of 20 days to file their answer.

In a divorce case, you may not default somebody after that period of time, you actually have to wait 60 days from the date of filing.

The state of Texas has a cooling off period that requires that you wait 60 days prior to finalizing a divorce, whether it be by agreement, or whether it be by default.

If there is no answer on file after the 60 days have elapsed, then you can move forward with presenting to the court a default final decree of divorce.

Then you’ll have a prove up which is where questions are asked, and you have to make certain statements to the court that you’ve done the things you need to do properly inside the decree and also for service to be able to get finalized.

For those reasons. It’s very important that you hire an attorney. I liken not having an attorney to actually performing surgery on yourself.

Nobody would go down to a hospital and ask them to set up a hospital bed and have them perform brain surgery on themselves.

The same way that you should not go to court without an attorney. You can have some very devastating results on going to a court without an attorney.