Georgetown Divorce Lawyer | Williamson County Cases, Heard Here in Georgetown
If you live in Georgetown, your divorce is filed with the Williamson County District Clerk and heard at the Justice Center on M.L.K. Street, minutes from the Square. SMB Law, PC handles divorce, custody, and support for Georgetown families in the courts where we appear regularly.
Serving Georgetown Families in Williamson County
Georgetown has grown from a courthouse-square town into one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and we work with families across it, from the established homes near the historic Square and the San Gabriel River to newer communities like Wolf Ranch, Berry Creek, and the Sun City retirement neighborhood. Many of our Georgetown clients have children in Georgetown ISD, and we build parenting plans that fit local school calendars and routines.
As the Williamson County seat, Georgetown is where the county family courts sit, at the Williamson County Justice Center on MLK Street just off the Square, so your case is heard right in town. Our office is about 27 miles south in downtown Austin, a straight 30 to 35 minute drive down I-35, and we also meet Georgetown clients by phone and video. Call (512) 561-5003 for a free consultation.
What Our Clients Say
Key Takeaway
- Georgetown is the Williamson County seat, so your divorce is filed with the District Clerk and heard at the Justice Center on M.L.K. Street, right in town. The filing fee is $350, the same with children or without. See our Texas divorce law overview for the statewide rules.
- Williamson County's standing order binds both spouses the day the petition is filed. It runs as a restraining order for fourteen days, then hardens into a temporary injunction, and it is enforceable by contempt. If you are represented, the clerk rejects a petition filed without it attached.
- That standing order does not reach modifications. If you are changing an existing Williamson County custody or support order, none of those automatic protections attach when you file, which is the opposite of how Travis County handles it.
Divorce in Georgetown, Where the Williamson County Courts Sit
Georgetown residents have one advantage nobody else in Williamson County has: the courthouse is here. Your petition goes to the District Clerk at the Justice Center on M.L.K. Street, your hearings are a few minutes from the Square, and you are not driving to another town to sit through a docket call.
The cases we see here cover an unusually wide range. Georgetown has been among the fastest-growing cities in the country for years, so we handle divorces for families in Wolf Ranch and Berry Creek who bought in the last few years and are sorting out a house that appreciated fast. We also handle a steady number of later-life divorces out of Sun City, where the marriage ran thirty years, the paychecks stopped, and the real question is how the retirement accounts and the Social Security picture get sorted out.
Those two situations call for very different work. Our Georgetown divorce lawyer handles both, and this page walks through what is specific to filing and finishing a case in Williamson County.
Where You File, and What the Clerk Charges
The petition is filed with the Williamson County District Clerk and the case is heard at the Williamson County Justice Center, 405 M.L.K. Street, Georgetown, Texas 78626. Attorneys have been required to file electronically through eFileTexas since July 1, 2014.
Before you can file, one spouse must have lived in Texas for six months and in Williamson County for ninety days. If you moved to Georgetown recently, that ninety day clock matters, and it is worth checking before you pay anything.
The filing fee is $350. It is the same whether or not you have children, despite what several law firm pages suggest. Add $8 for each citation the clerk issues and $70 if the clerk serves your spouse by certified mail. Those are the county’s charges, separate from what any attorney bills.
The Standing Order That Binds You the Day You File
Williamson County has a standing order in family cases. The current version took effect November 1, 2023, and it binds both spouses automatically the moment the petition is filed. Nobody asks a judge for it. For fourteen days it functions as a temporary restraining order, then it converts into a temporary injunction that holds until the court replaces it, and it is enforceable by contempt.
It stops the things that wreck cases early: draining accounts, selling or hiding property, canceling health or auto insurance, running up joint credit, harassing the other spouse, and removing the children from the State of Texas. It also bars disparaging the other parent in front of the kids.
One clause surprises nearly everyone. The order prohibits tracking or monitoring the other spouse, which covers phone location sharing, a GPS unit on a vehicle, and monitoring software on a shared computer. Plenty of couples share a location app for years without a second thought. It becomes a violation the day the case is filed.
The procedural trap is worth knowing before you spend money on it: in Williamson County, a represented party who files a petition without a copy of the standing order attached gets the filing rejected. We attach it every time and go through the clauses with you before anything is signed.
How Long a Georgetown Divorce Actually Takes
Texas imposes a sixty day waiting period between filing and the day a judge can sign the decree, with a narrow exception in cases involving family violence. Sixty days is the floor, not the average.
An agreed case in Georgetown where everything is settled can finish shortly after that mark. A contested case runs six to twelve months once temporary orders, discovery, and mediation are in the picture, and longer where a business, a custody evaluation, or a real property fight is involved. Williamson County judges want mediation completed before they will set a final trial, so plan for that step rather than treating it as optional.
What drives the timeline is not the courthouse. It is how much the two of you disagree and how fast financial information gets produced, and the meter runs the whole time.
Custody, Support, and Property for Georgetown Families
Texas splits what most people lump together as custody into two separate questions. Conservatorship is the set of decision rights over school, medical care, and psychiatric treatment. Possession and access is the calendar. A parent can hold full joint decision-making and still have the smaller share of overnights.
When children are involved in a divorce, their well-being is the primary focus of the legal proceedings. Texas Family Code section 153.131(b) starts every case with a presumption that the parents should be joint managing conservators. That presumption can be rebutted, but the parent asking the court to depart from it carries the burden.
The default calendar is the Standard Possession Order. Under section 153.3171, a parent living within fifty miles of the child can elect the expanded version, which turns Thursday evenings into overnights and runs weekends from Friday after school to Monday morning. For Georgetown parents whose ex stayed in Round Rock, Liberty Hill, Leander, or north Austin, that fifty mile line is almost always met, and it is worth asking for.
Child support runs off statutory percentages of net resources under section 154.125, applied up to a guideline ceiling the Attorney General adjusts every six years. On property, Texas is a community property state and the court divides the community estate in a manner it finds just and right, which is not the same thing as an automatic fifty-fifty split. Our child custody page goes further on the conservatorship side.
Parenting Schedules and the Georgetown ISD Calendar
A parenting schedule that ignores the school calendar falls apart by October. We write orders that name the exchange point and time, account for Georgetown ISD early-release days and the difference between its calendar and the neighboring districts, and say plainly which parent drives.
Under section 153.009, in a nonjury case a judge must interview a child twelve or older in chambers if either parent asks. That interview is not a vote, and the child does not pick a parent. It is one input among many, and we prepare parents honestly for what it does and does not accomplish rather than letting them build a strategy around it.
Holidays follow the statutory schedule in sections 153.312 through 153.317 unless the parents agree otherwise. Most Georgetown families do agree otherwise, because the statutory version does not know that one side of the family gathers on Christmas Eve and the other on the day itself. Writing that in is easy while the case is open and expensive to add later.
Later-Life Divorce in Sun City and Berry Creek
A meaningful share of Georgetown divorces involve couples past sixty with no minor children at all. Sun City alone puts thousands of retired households inside the city limits. Those cases have no custody fight, and they are not simple. The whole case is money, and the paychecks that would have absorbed a bad outcome are gone.
Three things drive them. First, retirement accounts. A 401(k) or pension is divided by a qualified domestic relations order, a separate order the plan administrator must approve. A decree that divides the account but is never followed by a QDRO leaves the money exactly where it sat.
Second, spousal maintenance. Under Texas Family Code section 8.051, a marriage of ten years or longer can support an award where the requesting spouse cannot meet minimum reasonable needs. Section 8.054 caps the duration by length of marriage, five years at ten to twenty, seven years at twenty to thirty, ten years at thirty and above. Section 8.055 caps the monthly amount at the lesser of $5,000 or twenty percent of the paying spouse’s average monthly gross income. Texas is stingier here than most states, and long-married Georgetown clients are often surprised by the ceiling.
Third, Social Security. A marriage that lasted at least ten years can leave a divorced spouse eligible for benefits on the other spouse’s record under federal rules. No Texas decree changes that, and it is not something a judge divides. It still belongs in the planning conversation, because it changes what a fair property split actually looks like.
How Child Support Is Actually Calculated
Guideline support under section 154.125 is a percentage of the paying parent’s monthly net resources: twenty percent for one child, twenty-five for two, thirty for three, and rising from there. Net resources are not take-home pay. The calculation starts from all income, then subtracts federal income tax at the single-filer rate, Social Security, union dues, and the cost of the children’s health and dental coverage.
The percentage applies only up to a statutory cap on net resources, which the Texas Attorney General adjusts every six years. Income above the cap does not automatically produce more support. A parent seeking more has to prove the children’s proven needs under section 154.126.
Support is separate from the medical and dental support the court orders alongside it, and it does not cover college, club sports, or a car at sixteen. Georgetown parents routinely assume those are included. They are not, and if they matter to you they have to be negotiated into the decree. We also handle changes to existing child support orders.
Modifying a Williamson County Order Later
Start with the part almost nobody knows. The Williamson County standing order applies to original suits. It does not apply to modifications. If you file to change an existing custody or support order in Georgetown, none of those automatic protections attach, and nothing restrains the other parent unless you ask the court for it. Travis County does the opposite, which is why an Austin firm’s page will steer a Georgetown parent wrong on this exact point.
On the merits, section 156.101 requires a material and substantial change in circumstances plus a showing that the change serves the child’s best interest. A relocation, a remarriage, a new work schedule, a medical development, or a schedule that stopped fitting as the children got older can all qualify. Preferring a different result than the one you agreed to does not.
Two timing rules catch people. Under section 156.102, a suit filed within one year of the order to change which parent has the exclusive right to designate the child’s primary residence requires a supporting affidavit meeting specific statutory grounds, and without it the court denies the request without a hearing. And under section 156.401, child support can generally be modified when three years have passed and the guideline amount would differ by twenty percent or one hundred dollars, or when there is a material and substantial change. Our modification page covers the process in detail.
Protecting Children in Cases Involving Family Violence
Texas Family Code section 153.004 requires a court to consider evidence of physical or sexual abuse and family violence when it decides conservatorship and possession, and it bars appointing joint managing conservators where credible evidence shows a history or pattern of family violence. The court can order supervised exchanges, supervised possession, or no possession at all where the safety of a child requires it.
The sixty day waiting period also has a family violence exception, so a case involving an active protective order can move faster than a typical one.
We represent Georgetown parents on both sides of these cases, and both demand evidence rather than argument, with the record built before the hearing rather than during it. Our protective order page covers the standards involved.
Why Choose Our Georgetown Divorce Attorneys
Shane M. Boasberg founded SMB Law, PC in Austin and has practiced Texas family law for more than twenty years. He was selected to Texas Monthly Rising Stars in 2012 and again from 2014 through 2016, and he is a member of the Austin Bar Association. He appears regularly in the family courts of Williamson, Travis, and Hays counties, including the Georgetown bench that hears these cases.
We Know Williamson County Courts Inside and Out
Local practice is not a marketing line, it is a list of specifics. Knowing that a represented party’s petition gets rejected without the standing order attached. Knowing the order does not follow you into a modification. Knowing which associate judge hears temporary orders and what that court expects to see before it will grant relief. Our divorce attorneys work in the Georgetown courts often enough to know those answers rather than guess at them.
You Get the Attorney You Hired
At a larger firm the attorney who takes your consultation often is not the one standing up at the hearing. Shane Boasberg handles the case he is hired for from the first meeting through the final decree, and Georgetown clients deal with him directly. You also get a straight read, including the parts you would rather not hear, in month one instead of month eight.
Getting to the Justice Center
The Williamson County Justice Center sits at 405 M.L.K. Street in Georgetown, a short drive from the Square. Still build in time for the security line and for parking, which fills up on heavy docket mornings. Being late to a Georgetown hearing is not a neutral event, so we tell clients where to park and where to meet before the first setting.
Contact Our Georgetown Divorce Lawyers
The first call is a conversation, not a commitment. Bring what you have and we will tell you what a Georgetown divorce lawyer would actually do with it. Reach SMB Law, PC at (512) 561-5003.
More ways we help Georgetown families: contested divorce, uncontested divorce, child custody, car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, and wrongful death.
A Georgetown divorce is a Williamson County case, and Williamson County runs on rules that differ from Travis County twenty-five miles south. The standing order binds you the day you file and reaches things most people never consider, including the location app on a family phone. It does not follow you into a modification. The filing fee is the same with children or without. The courthouse is here in town. Getting those four things right at the start is the difference between a case that opens cleanly and one that opens with a rejected petition, and that is where we begin with every Georgetown client who calls.
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Questions Georgetown Clients Ask Us Most
Can I file in Williamson County if my spouse lives out of state?
Usually yes. Texas Family Code section 6.301 is satisfied if either spouse has lived in Texas six months and in Williamson County ninety days. If you meet that from Georgetown, your spouse living in another state does not block the filing. Whether a Texas court can also divide property that spouse holds or order support from them is a separate question under section 6.305, and it turns on their past connections to Texas. Two different issues, analyzed separately, and we walk clients through each step of it.
Does it matter which spouse files first?
Less than people think, and not nothing. Filing first does not give you an advantage on child custody or property. Texas judges do not favor petitioners. What filing first does control is county and timing. It fixes the case in Williamson County before a spouse who is about to move can file somewhere else, it starts the sixty day clock, and it puts the standing order in place on your schedule rather than theirs. In a case where one spouse is quietly moving money, that timing is the whole ballgame. In an amicable case it makes almost no difference.
What if my spouse refuses to sign anything?
Texas does not require both spouses to agree to a divorce. One spouse can get one over the other’s objection. If your spouse is served and never files an answer, the case can proceed by default once the answer deadline passes and the sixty day period has run. If they answer but stonewall, the case moves through temporary orders, discovery, and mediation on the court’s calendar rather than theirs, and the judge decides what they would not. Refusal delays a case. It does not stop one, and our Georgetown divorce lawyers handle it either way.
Can I go back to my former name in the decree?
Yes, and it is far cheaper now than later. Texas Family Code section 6.706 directs the court to restore a party’s prior name on request in the divorce itself. Ask for it in the petition and the decree carries the change, which is all the Social Security Administration, the DMV, and your bank need. Skip it and you are looking at a separate name change suit with its own filing fee and hearing. It costs nothing to include, and it is the item our family law attorneys see forgotten more than any other.
Will we have to go to mediation before trial?
If your case is contested, plan on it. Williamson County judges generally want the parties to have mediated before they will give you a final trial setting, and Texas Family Code section 153.0071 gives them the authority to send you. A mediated settlement agreement that meets the statute is binding, and neither side can walk it back the next morning. That cuts both ways, which is why it pays to walk in prepared rather than treating mediation as a box to check. A genuinely agreed case usually skips it.
SMB Law, PC Practice Areas in Georgetown
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