A guide for expats · Frankfurt am Main
Divorce in Germany as an expat: cost, duration and process
You live in Germany, you married somewhere else, and now the marriage is ending. Before the cost or the paperwork, one question decides everything else — whose law even applies to you? Here is the whole picture, with the official figures behind it.
The short version, in numbers
≈ 130,100
divorces in Germany in 2025 ↗
The system that decides your case handles roughly this many every year.
39,600+
German–foreign marriages in 2024 ↗
Opposite-sex marriages where one partner held a foreign passport — before counting couples where both do.
≈ 1 year
living apart before you can divorce ↗
The Trennungsjahr — a separation year — comes first, § 1565 BGB.
4–12 months
from filing to decree, as a rule
An amicable case; contested proceedings can run for years.
The question everything hinges on
Which country’s law applies to your divorce
The instinct is to assume you divorce under the law of the country whose passport you hold. Across the EU, that instinct is wrong. A single regulation — Rome III (EU No 1259/2010↗) — decides it, and its guiding rule is where you live, not where you are from.
For a couple habitually resident in Germany, that means German divorce law — even if neither spouse is German. Two Americans in Frankfurt, a British–Indian couple, a German married to an Australian: living here, they are divorced under German law unless they validly chose otherwise in advance.
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1 · Your choice
Spouses may agree in advance which law governs — the law of where one of you lives, or the nationality of either spouse. A limited, formal choice, but it comes first.
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2 · Where you live now
Absent a choice: the law of the country where you are both habitually resident when the case is filed. Living in Germany, this is German law — passport immaterial.
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3 · Where you last lived together
Failing that: the law of your last shared country of residence, if the move away is under a year old and one spouse still lives there.
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4 · Your shared nationality
Only if none of the above fits: the law of a nationality you both hold.
A German court runs down this list in order and stops at the first rule that fits. In practice, for people settled in Germany, it stops at step 2.
Two details matter for people who came from outside the EU. First, Rome III has universal application↗: the law a German court arrives at can even be the law of a non-EU country — the rules do not only point to EU law. Second, the choice in step 1 is real but formal. To agree that, say, the law of a shared home country should govern your divorce, the agreement must be in writing — and in Germany it is recorded before a notary to be valid. A clause buried in a foreign prenup will not always do it.
Which law applies is not a technicality. It reaches into how — and whether — spousal maintenance is owed, how property is divided, and whether pensions are equalised at all. Two couples in identical circumstances can reach very different outcomes because a different national law sits underneath the case.
Jurisdiction
Which court is even allowed to decide
Whether a German court may hear your divorce is a separate question from which law it then applies — and it is answered by another EU regulation, Brussels II ter (EU 2019/1111↗). Habitual residence in Germany, yours or your spouse’s, is enough to give a German family court jurisdiction, wherever you married.
Where a court in your home country could also hear the case, timing matters: as a rule, the court first seised takes the case and the other must stand down. If a cross-border split is on the horizon, where and when you file can shape the outcome — which is exactly the kind of decision to take with advice, early.
And afterwards — is a German divorce recognised back home?
Within the EU, a German decree is recognised in every other member state automatically, with no separate procedure (Brussels II ter↗). You are divorced everywhere in the Union the moment you are divorced here.
Outside the EU — the United States, the United Kingdom since Brexit, Australia, Canada — recognition follows that country’s own rules, often a registration or recognition step. It is usually straightforward when planned for, and awkward when discovered a year later. If you expect to remarry or move home, this is worth settling early.
Duration
The process, step by step
German divorce is court-based from start to finish — no registrar, no purely online service ends a marriage here. The path is the same for everyone; only the folder of issues alongside it changes.
- 1
The separation year
≈ 12 monthsThe marriage must have broken down, and the law reads a full year of living apart as proof (§ 1565 BGB). Separate homes are not required — a separation can run inside one household under conditions. The clock starts before any paperwork.
- 2
Filing the petition
week 1After the year, your lawyer files the petition with the family court that has jurisdiction. In Germany a lawyer is mandatory to file; the responding spouse needs none if the divorce is uncontested.
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Service — the cut-off date
+ weeksThe court serves the petition on the other spouse. That date closes the marital period for the pension split (Versorgungsausgleich) — abroad, service can add time.
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Pension equalisation & any side issues
the long poleThe court gathers pension data from both spouses as a matter of course; this step usually sets the overall timeline. Maintenance, the Zugewinnausgleich and custody are resolved in parallel where they arise.
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The hearing
shortBoth spouses attend briefly and confirm the breakdown and the separation year. An interpreter attends where needed; the proceedings themselves run in German.
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The decree
finalThe court pronounces the divorce. With both sides waiving appeal it is final at once, otherwise after a one-month period (§ 63 FamFG).
Start to finish, an amicable divorce runs about four to twelve months from filing. A fuller walk-through lives on our how a German divorce works page.
Cost
What a German divorce costs
There is no open-ended hourly bill. Court and lawyer fees are fixed by statute — the FamGKG for the court, the RVG for the lawyer — and both scale with a single figure, the Verfahrenswert (the value of the matter).
That value starts from three times the couple’s combined monthly net income (§ 43 FamGKG). Two spouses on €3,000 net each give a base of €18,000; the pension split and any contested assets — a property, above all — raise it from there. What does not raise it is how bitterly the case is argued.
So the lever is in your hands: an amicable divorce keeps costs lean — one lawyer can file, the other spouse simply consents, and the court fees are shared.
Estimate the fees with our cost calculator
Worked example — two spouses, €3,000 net each, one pension right apiece
- 3 × combined monthly net income (2 × €3,000), § 43 FamGKG
- €18,000
- + each pension right in the equalisation, § 50 FamGKG
- raises the value
- + any contested matters (maintenance, a property …), §§ 50 f. FamGKG
- only if present
- = Verfahrenswert
- the basis for every fee
On that value sit the court fee (twice the statutory value-fee) and the lawyer’s fees (a 1.3 procedure fee and a 1.2 hearing fee under the RVG), plus VAT on the legal fees. The multipliers are fixed; only the Verfahrenswert changes — which is why an amicable case with little in dispute stays the cheapest by a wide margin.
Divorce cost calculator
Non-binding estimate of court and lawyer costs for the standard case (Germany).
Note: without a net income, the statutory minimum value in dispute is applied. The amounts shown then correspond to the minimum cost of a divorce.
- Value in dispute €3,000.00
- Court costs (2.0 fee) €251.00
- Lawyer costs (1 lawyer, incl. VAT) €724.41
- Estimated total costs (divorce) €975.41
- Children considered (income reduction)
- Note: court costs usually split in half (§ 150 FamFG)
Assumptions: OLG Frankfurt (Hessen). The court values (children, assets) are discretionary decisions of individual panels (§ 43 FamGKG) and may differ in individual cases.
Non-binding estimate without any claim to accuracy or completeness. The values depend on the legal status; the asset surcharge and the reduction for children are court-dependent. The actual value in dispute is set solely by the family court. This is not legal or tax advice within the meaning of the RDG. The calculation runs entirely in your browser; no data is transmitted or stored. For low incomes, legal aid (§§ 76 ff. FamFG) may be available.
The question expat parents ask first
Children, custody and moving back home
For an expat parent, one worry outranks the rest: can I take the children home with me? It is also where the sharpest mistakes are made, so it is worth being precise.
First, custody is not something you “win” in the divorce. In Germany, joint parental responsibility (gemeinsame elterliche Sorge) normally continues after separation. Custody is decided separately, and only where it is disputed — always against a single yardstick, the child’s best interest (Kindeswohl), not either parent’s convenience.
Because responsibility is shared, so is the right to decide where the child lives. Moving a child abroad to live is not yours to decide alone: it needs the other parent’s consent, or a family-court decision in its place. You cannot simply board a flight with the children and settle the question later.
The line not to cross
Taking a child across a border without the other parent’s consent can count as international child abduction under the 1980 Hague Convention↗ — and trigger a fast-track process to return the child to Germany, whatever the merits of the underlying dispute. Whichever side of it you are on, it moves quickly and it is not the moment to act without advice.
Child support itself is more mechanical: it follows a published guideline (the Düsseldorfer Tabelle), scaled to the paying parent’s income and the child’s age — and it is owed regardless of which country a parent lives in.
Five things that catch people off guard
Where German law works differently
No blame, one test
German law asks a single thing — has the marriage broken down beyond repair? Who left whom, an affair, the grievances: almost none of it moves the outcome.
Pensions divide on their own
Retirement entitlements earned during the marriage are split between both spouses by the court, as a matter of routine in all but the shortest marriages, unless a valid agreement says otherwise.
Your assets stay yours
The default is not community of property. Each spouse keeps what is theirs; only the gain built up across the marriage — the Zugewinn — is balanced at the end.
Maintenance runs on formulas
Child support, and spousal support where it is owed, track statutory rules and published guidelines, not a judge’s sympathy on the day.
Assets abroad still count
Property, accounts or a pension in another country do not sit outside the picture. Cross-border wealth is where a German divorce needs the most careful handling — see our high-asset work.
A prenup from home may not hold
A marriage contract signed abroad is not automatically decisive here. German courts examine such agreements for fairness and can set one-sided terms aside — and which property law even applies is a separate question of its own.
For the cross-border mechanics in depth, see international & cross-border family law; for larger estates, high-asset divorce.
Common questions
Which country’s divorce law applies if we live in Germany?
Can I get divorced in Germany without German citizenship?
We married abroad — is that a problem?
How long does a divorce in Germany take?
What does a divorce in Germany cost?
If a court back home is also involved, who goes first?
This page explains the law; a case needs someone to run it. If you are looking for an English-speaking divorce lawyer in Frankfurt, that is what this office does — for expats, binational couples and cross-border cases. You can also read our guides to the separation year and international family law.
Contact
Talk it through, in English, before anything is decided
A confidential initial consultation — where you stand, what applies to you, and the sensible next step. We reply personally, usually within one business day.
Sources
- Federal Statistical Office (Destatis): “0.6 % more divorces in 2025”, press release No. 220, 26 June 2026 — destatis.de.
- Federal Statistical Office (Destatis): “Marriages between Germans and foreigners” (2024: 21,542 German-man/foreign-woman + 18,122 German-woman/foreign-man = 39,664 opposite-sex binational marriages) — destatis.de.
- Council Regulation (EU) No 1259/2010 (Rome III), on the law applicable to divorce and legal separation — eur-lex.europa.eu.
- Council Regulation (EU) 2019/1111 (Brussels II ter), on jurisdiction, the recognition and enforcement of decisions in matrimonial matters and matters of parental responsibility, in force since 1 August 2022 — eur-lex.europa.eu.
- Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction — hcch.net.
- Governing statutes: § 1565 BGB (breakdown / separation year), § 43 FamGKG (value of the matter), § 63 FamFG (finality), VersAusglG (pension equalisation).