This tool provides general cost estimates for informational purposes only. It is NOT legal advice. Costs vary significantly based on individual circumstances. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction for specific guidance.
2026 cost estimates for divorce in Illinois, including attorney fees, court costs, and other expenses.
As of June 29, 2026, a divorce in Illinois costs on average $9,650, typically $5,350-$16,100 for a moderate-complexity case, based on sourced attorney-fee and court-cost data. Typical attorney rates run $215 to $430 per hour. A moderate-complexity case typically takes 3-6 months to resolve. Common related costs include court filing fee ($100-$400) and service of process ($50-$100).
Data verified: June 29, 2026
| Complexity | Low | Median | High | Typical Duration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simple | $1,550 | $3,150 | $5,200 | 1-3 months |
| Moderate | $5,350 | $9,650 | $16,100 | 3-6 months |
| Complex | $15,050 | $22,050 | $35,100 | 6-18 months |
Last verified: June 2026
$215 – $430/ hour
Median: $325/hr
3-6 months
For moderate complexity cases
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</script>Divorce costs form around two variables that compound each other: how much the spouses disagree on, and how many separate issues (property division, child custody, child support, alimony) are in dispute. An uncontested divorce with no minor children and no real estate can resolve with a single court filing fee and a document-preparation charge. Once custody or asset division is contested, cost accumulates from discovery (formal document exchange), mediation sessions billed hourly, and — in the most complex cases — expert witnesses such as forensic accountants (business or investment valuation) and custody evaluators.
Attorney billing in divorce is typically hourly rather than flat-fee, because the number of court appearances and negotiation rounds is not knowable in advance. A retainer is paid upfront and drawn down as the attorney bills time; complex cases often require replenishing the retainer more than once. Court filing fees and mediation fees are set by the state or county and apply regardless of which attorney is hired.
Take a moderate-complexity divorce matter in Illinois. The recorded median total is $9,650, with reported quotes clustering between $5,350 and $16,100. Each statutory line below is sized against that median.
Added together the itemised lines come to $700–$2,600, which leaves roughly $7,050–$8,950 of the Illinois median as professional time — the part that differs between quotes. One further recorded fee is not itemised above and is not in that total.
At $9,650, the median divorce cost in Illinois runs 10% above the $8,798 national average across all 50 states and DC.
Illinois carries 3 rows — simple, $1,550–$5,200 at $160–$325/hr over 1-3 months; moderate, $5,350–$16,100 at $215–$430/hr over 3-6 months; complex, $15,050–$35,100 at $295–$540/hr over 6-18 months — on 4 shared citations. They put it above the midpoint, short of the top quarter.
$9,650 is a median, not the middle of the band — $4,300 above the $5,350 floor, $6,450 under the $16,100 ceiling. Every rank below is out of 51.
At 17th of 51, Illinois sits above the midpoint of the divorce table: $1,100 more than the $8,550 median state, or 13%, with 16 states recording a higher median.
District of Columbia ($9,700) and Michigan ($9,600) bracket Illinois inside a $100 window — narrow enough that 17th is close to arbitrary.
4 tracked states — District of Columbia, Michigan, Utah, Maine among them — record a median within three percent of Illinois's $9,650. The figure sits in the densest part of the divorce distribution, where a rank change of several rows costs only a few hundred dollars.
Ranked by hourly rate instead of by total, Illinois does not move: 17th on both measures, at $325 an hour. Rate and total are telling the same story here.
| Rank | State | Median | Against Illinois |
|---|---|---|---|
| 11 | Delaware | $10,200 | +$550 |
| 12 | New York | $10,100 | +$450 |
| 13 | Vermont | $10,100 | +$450 |
| 14 | New Jersey | $10,050 | +$400 |
| 15 | Connecticut | $10,000 | +$350 |
| 16 | District of Columbia | $9,700 | +$50 |
| 17 | Illinois | $9,650 | — |
| 18 | Michigan | $9,600 | −$50 |
| 19 | Utah | $9,500 | −$150 |
| 20 | Maine | $9,400 | −$250 |
| 21 | Minnesota | $9,350 | −$300 |
| 22 | Georgia | $8,950 | −$700 |
| 23 | Nevada | $8,950 | −$700 |
The 17th position is not a stable fact about Illinois: $50 up or $50 down moves Illinois a row, and a ten percent revision in either direction would cross 18 rows, 10 above and 8 below in near-equal numbers.
Climbing five places would mean passing New York, Vermont, New Jersey, Connecticut, District of Columbia and adding $450 to the $9,650 recorded here.
Five places down means passing under Michigan, Utah, Maine, Minnesota, Georgia: $700.
$3,250 short of Hawaii ($12,900), $3,600 clear of Alabama ($6,050).
The $9,650 median divided by the $325 median rate implies roughly 30 billable hours. That rounds to the same 30 hours as the peer median, so on workload Illinois is indistinguishable from the middle of the table at this precision.
Illinois records a 7x gap between its simple and complex divorce medians. Decomposed, that is 4.2x more billed time and 1.65x a higher rate: 13 hours at $245 becomes 54 hours at $405.
From $5,350 to $16,100 the moderate band is $10,750 wide, close to the $9,550 peer median. End to end that is 33 hours at $325.
The $9,650 median across 3-6 months is about $2,144 a month. A complex divorce costs more in total but less per month — roughly $1,838 across 6-18 months — because the additional cost arrives as a longer timeline rather than a heavier monthly burn.
By implied hours Illinois falls to 27th of 51 at 30 hours, 10 places below its 17th on cost — the divorce total arriving on less recorded work.
30% up the $5,350–$16,100 band sits the $8,550 table midpoint, buying 26 hours at $325 against the 30 the local divorce median implies — 4 hours apart.
| Measure | Illinois | Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Moderate median | $9,650 | 17th |
| Hourly median | $325 | 17th |
| Implied hours | 30 | 27th |
| Simple median | $3,150 | 20th |
| Complex median | $22,050 | 23rd |
$325 an hour puts Illinois between Colorado ($335) and Minnesota ($320) — not the divorce cost pairing.
No other tracked state records $325 as its median rate, so the figure identifies Illinois on its own within this dataset.
$9,650 buys 39 hours at $245, 30 at $325, 24 at $405.
| Rank | State | Median rate |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | Virginia | $340 |
| 16 | Colorado | $335 |
| 17 | Illinois | $325 |
| 18 | Minnesota | $320 |
| 19 | Oregon | $320 |
The ranking barely moves across tiers — 20th at the simple tier, 17th at moderate, 23rd at complex of 51 — so Illinois keeps roughly the same relative position whether the divorce is straightforward or contested.
$3,150 is 20th of 51 on a straightforward divorce, under Utah ($3,200) and over Maine ($3,150), $250 over the $2,900 tier midpoint.
$22,050 is 23rd of 51 once contested, between Pennsylvania ($22,600) and Wyoming ($21,950), $250 off the $21,800 tier midpoint.
$150 separates the simple ceiling of $5,200 from the moderate floor of $5,350, so the first escalation is a clean break, while the moderate and complex bands overlap from $15,050 upward. The expensive end of a routine divorce and the cheap end of a contested one are the same money in Illinois.
| Tier | Illinois | Rank | Tier midpoint | Implied hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| simple | $3,150 | 20th | $2,900 | 13 |
| moderate | $9,650 | 17th | $8,550 | 30 |
| complex | $22,050 | 23rd | $21,800 | 54 |
$3,150 drops Illinois to 20th of 51 on straightforward matters, 3 below its moderate position and $250 (9%) over the $2,900 tier midpoint.
13 implied hours at $245: 43% of the moderate tier's 30, over 1-3 months.
Utah ($3,200) and Maine ($3,150) bracket it — a $50 window.
5 states record a simple-tier median within three percent of $3,150, denser than the 4 around the moderate row.
$22,050 drops Illinois to 23rd of 51 on contested matters, 6 below its moderate position and $250 (1%) over the $21,800 tier midpoint.
54 implied hours at $405: 180% of the moderate tier's 30, over 6-18 months.
Pennsylvania ($22,600) and Wyoming ($21,950) bracket it — a $650 window.
6 states record a complex-tier median within three percent of $22,050, denser than the 4 around the moderate row.
| Rank | State | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 18 | Minnesota | $3,200 |
| 19 | Utah | $3,200 |
| 20 | Illinois | $3,150 |
| 21 | Maine | $3,150 |
| 22 | Vermont | $3,150 |
| Rank | State | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 21 | Florida | $22,800 |
| 22 | Pennsylvania | $22,600 |
| 23 | Illinois | $22,050 |
| 24 | Wyoming | $21,950 |
| 25 | Arizona | $21,800 |
$9,650 ranks a divorce 2nd of 8 in Illinois, under Criminal Defense, over DUI / DWI. At 92% of Criminal Defense ($10,450).
The state does not rank uniformly. Illinois is 3rd of 51 for Personal Injury but 23rd for Real Estate Closing, a 20-place spread across the matter types tracked here, so its 17th on divorce says little about what the other lines cost.
The spread across practice areas is wide. Immigration runs 23% above its own midpoint, while Real Estate Closing runs 1% above its own midpoint — 22 percentage points apart. A single "Illinois is expensive" or "Illinois is inexpensive" claim would be wrong for at least one of the matter types tracked here.
The largest tracked median in Illinois is 4.8x the smallest, effectively the 5.1x that the typical state records: the internal spread is ordinary even where the levels are not.
5 of 8 matter types rank Illinois in the upper third, 0 in the lower, 3 between; divorce is 17th.
In percentile terms it sits at the 68th percentile of the 51 tracked states.
| Matter | Simple | Moderate | Complex | Hours | Rank | vs mid | Above |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Criminal Defense | $3,450 | $10,450 | $33,400 | 32 | 22nd | +2% | Maryland |
| Divorce | $3,150 | $9,650 | $22,050 | 30 | 17th | +13% | District of Columbia |
| DUI / DWI | $3,650 | $7,850 | $19,400 | 27 | 21st | +5% | Oregon |
| Personal Injury | $1,600 | $5,950 | $16,900 | — | 3rd | +14% | California |
| Immigration | $2,150 | $5,850 | $11,800 | 20 | 12th | +23% | District of Columbia |
| Bankruptcy | $1,700 | $3,900 | $5,500 | 14 | 14th | +8% | Texas |
| Real Estate Closing | $1,000 | $2,250 | $4,900 | 8 | 23rd | +1% | Virginia |
| Estate Planning / Probate | $650 | $2,200 | $5,950 | 7 | 11th | +6% | New York |
Simple tier. $3,150 ÷ $245 = about 13 hours, spread over 1-3 months at roughly $1,575 a month. The $6,500 step to the moderate tier is 17 more hours at that rate.
Work against price. $9,650 to $22,050 is a $12,400 step, mostly work: 24 more hours at $325 is $7,800, while moving to $405 across 54 hours adds $4,320. Work carries 64%.
Borrowing the wrong row. Michigan ($9,600) is $50 light, District of Columbia ($9,700) is $50 heavy — but the $8,550 table midpoint is out by $1,100, 22x the neighbour error.
Both ends, in time. $5,350 is 16 hours at $325; $16,100 is 50. Over the 3-6 months recorded for a moderate divorce, that is 4 to 11 hours a month — the difference between an occasional file review and continuous work.
Contested against simple. At Illinois's own recorded figures, $22,050 buys 7 matters at the $3,150 simple median — or, counted in time, 54 implied hours against 13, a factor of 4.2 — the two ratios differing because the rate rises with the tier.
Verified June 2026. Filing fees change on the Illinoiscourt's own schedule; billing models are covered in the legal fees guide.
This tool provides general cost estimates for informational purposes only. It is NOT legal advice. Costs vary significantly based on individual circumstances. Consult a licensed attorney in your jurisdiction for specific guidance.