House measure would raise divorce filing fee from $95 to $500

A state representative who sponsored a controversial divorce bill last year has introduced a new divorce measure that would increase the court filing fee for divorces five times over.

Rep. Peggy Wallace, R-West Jordan, says her HB322 is in no way meant to reduce in number the 12,000 divorces in Utah each year; nor is it aimed at penalizing couples who are getting divorces.

"We are just trying to recoup" the actual costs to the Utah courts for the divorces in the state each year, said Wallace.

In the 2005 Legislature, Wallace introduced a bill that would have removed from Utah code "unreconcilable differences" as a cause for divorce — effectively doing away with "no fault" divorce in Utah.

She was roundly criticized — and she says roundly misunderstood. She pulled that bill and it died.

HB322 would increase the court filing fee for a divorce from $95 to $500.

But Sarah Wilhelm, fiscal analyst for Voices For Utah Children, said Wallace's new bill is a bad idea.

"Its largest effect would be on low-income Utah families who don't have an extra $400 to get a divorce," said Wilhelm. If parents didn't have the extra $400, they may stay together in an unhappy, dysfunctional marriage, she said.

"And that's not good for the kids or the parents. (The new bill) just puts more financial stress on people who can't make rent, who can't feed their children properly. It's $400 that could go to immunizations, go to new shoes so the kids don't have to wear shoes with holes in them — the list of needs that that (filing fee) could go to is very long for low-income families."

The $95 fee (set 15 years ago) currently brings in just under $1 million, said Wallace. But the cost to the courts to handle divorces is closer to $4.3 million. At $500, the state still wouldn't recoup all that $4.3 million, but a good portion of it, she said.

"There is no good fiscal reason why everyone should take on the financial burden of divorce court costs," she said. "We charge all kinds of fees in this state — the idea behind them being the fees should cover the cost" of the circumstances they are trying to pay for.

"Society, and the state, pay all kinds of societal costs with divorce." Just one example is that often a divorced mother has to go on welfare for awhile, a large cost to the state and society, she said.