About Divorce Roadmap
Hi — I’m Jamie Rowe.
Divorce Roadmap started with one person: a friend going through a California divorce who was paying a lawyer for every hour of guidance, even for things that turned out to be straightforward once someone actually read the paperwork closely. I started helping him look through his case documents and dig into the rules that applied to his situation. More than once, when he brought what we’d found back to his attorney, it held up — and a few times, it meant he didn’t need to pay for the attorney’s time on that particular step at all.
That’s the gap this site tries to close. The official information genuinely exists, but it’s scattered across dozens of court pages, written in legal language, and it rarely answers the first questions people actually have: What does it cost? How long does it take? Which forms do I need?
I have a law degree, but I’m not a licensed attorney, and I write everything here the same way I approached my friend’s case: find the primary source, cite it, and never present a guess as a fact.
This isn’t a side project I wrote once and left alone. New guides get added regularly, covering every stage from deciding how to file through the final judgment, and the site gets updated when the law does — most recently for the joint petition procedure (Form FL-700) that took effect in 2026, and the tax law change under Senate Bill 711 that changed how spousal support is treated on state returns starting this year.
How I verify every article
- Primary sources only — California Courts Self-Help Center (selfhelp.courts.ca.gov), the Judicial Council’s official form pages, and the California Family Code (leginfo.legislature.ca.gov)
- Statutes cited inline — when an article states a rule (like the 6-month waiting period), it names the code section so you can read it yourself
- Fees checked against the official statewide fee schedule — re-verified before any content update
- Dated verification — each article states when its facts were last checked, because a fee, a form number, or a deadline that was correct last year isn’t guaranteed to still be correct today. If an article’s date is old, treat the number in it as a starting point to confirm, not a final answer.
In practice, that means an article doesn’t just say a form is called “FL-140” — it names what FL-140 actually is on the court’s own current form page, and if that page changes, the article gets corrected, not left as-is.
What this site is — and isn’t
Divorce Roadmap is legal information, not legal advice. I have a law degree, but I’m not a licensed attorney, and this site doesn’t create an attorney-client relationship.
Free resources that CAN give case-specific help:
- Your county court’s Self-Help Center — free form review in person
- The Family Law Facilitator — free help with support paperwork
- A licensed California family law attorney — for complex assets, businesses, or power-imbalance situations
If you’re unsure which path fits your case, start with your county’s self-help center. It’s free.
Contact
Questions, corrections, or feedback? Jamie.Rowe.writes@proton.me
(Spotted an error or an outdated fee? Corrections are welcome — accuracy is the whole point.)