In Georgia, to file a divorce action in the proper court, one must establish three criteria:
1) Proper venue;
2) Jurisdiction over the subject matter; and
3) Jurisdiction over the parties.
The Georgia jurisdiction law is fairly stringent; if you fail to establish one of these three prongs, the case will be dismissed. Establishing proper venue is the simplest of the three: the divorce action is usually filed in the county in which the defendant lives. However, if the defendant consents to filing in the petitioner’s county, this is admissible as well. If the defendant is a nonresident or cannot be located in Georgia, the divorce should be filed in the Superior Court in which the plaintiff resides. You can challenge the venue that the case is filed in if you want to change it.
Subject matter jurisdiction refers to the court’s ability to hear a certain case and subject matter. To establish jurisdiction, one must have a valid marriage and residence/domicile in Georgia. Residency in the state is established after 6 (six) consecutive months prior to filing the case. You may file a case in Georgia even if you have never lived there, as long as your spouse has for the last six months or more.
In Georgia, the Superior Court hears family law and thus divorce cases, not the State Court or the Magistrate Court.
You must also establish personal jurisdiction in order to obtain a divorce in Georgia. This means that the court will have jurisdiction over both spouses in order to grant the divorce. Therefore, you must establish personal jurisdiction over your spouse, and this can be done in a number of ways.
Your spouse can voluntarily submit themselves to the personal jurisdiction of the court by signing an acknowledgement of service. If your spouse lives in Georgia and you know their whereabouts, you can have them personally served with your complaint by a sheriff or private process server.
If you are unable to locate your spouse after a thorough search, you may also establish personal jurisdiction through service by publication. This jurisdiction will, however be of a more limited nature and the court will only be able to award a divorce and a division of property that is located in Georgia. Child support, alimony, and property division outside of the state will not be within the court’s jurisdiction.
In the case that your spouse is no longer living in Georgia, you may be able to use the Long Arm Statute to establish personal jurisdiction over a nonresident. The following requirements stand:
1) Your spouse must own, use, or possess any real property situated within the state; or
2) They maintained a matrimonial domicile in this state at the time the divorce is filed or if the defendant resided in the state preceding the commencement of the action, whether cohabiting during that time or not.
This basically means that if you and your spouse own property in Georgia or you lived together prior to them leaving the state, you can establish personal jurisdiction. Your spouse must still be properly served in order for this to be valid.
