How to Divorce Someone You Can't Find

Divorcing someone you can’t find provides challenges that you will not encounter if you knew where to find the missing person, but the courts will still grant you a divorce. The divorce process, known as service by publication, involves looking for the missing person, documenting the search, filing the proper legal paperwork and even hiring a private investigator or a lawyer to assist with the search.

1. Seek and hire a divorce lawyer experienced in service by publication divorce. Find out your state’s requirement for such a divorce and ensure that you follow these rules to the letter so as not to prejudice your efforts.


2. Contact family members and friends to locate your missing spouse. Check with the police departments, the prisons, the motor vehicles departments and telephone directories of towns and cities your spouse may have lived in the past.


3. Hire the services of a private investigator, although not legally a requirement, it may result in locating your missing spouse.


4. Search for information from veterans hospitals if your spouse previously served in the military. Also check to see if your spouse applied for veterans’ benefits or re-enlisted in the military.


5. Maintain accurate and detailed records of your searches including details of the people you contacted. Make requests for information on your missing spouse in writing and keep copies of these mailings as well as the responses you received.


6. Complete a petition or a complaint for divorce. This document requires you to provide your name and address as well as those of your spouse. You will need to state the reason for the divorce. Indicate that you seek a divorce and cannot find your spouse. Also state that you searched for and seek to divorce someone who has disappeared.


7. Using the service of a notary public, complete and sign an affidavit for service by publication. Signing this form demands your truthfulness or you will face severe penalties. Here again you must state that you have searched for your missing spouse unsuccessfully and make a request to post a legal notice in your local paper serving your spouse with divorce. Notarize this document.


8. Publish the service of publication when granted by the judge. The order will stipulate the frequency of the publication. Normally the court will require that publication should occur weekly for up to 6 consecutive weeks, and the notice must include that you intend to sue for divorce.


9. File this sworn statement at the Clerk of the Court and again state that you have unsuccessfully attempted to find your spouse. File also the documentation you have accumulated as a result of your searches.


10. Complete and file an affidavit of publication with the court. The newspaper verifies in this affidavit that you published the required notices for the required period of time. Based on this, the judge will grant your divorce.