Contested Divorce in Arkansas: Grounds, Timeline, and Trial

A contested divorce in Arkansas is a circuit court case in which spouses can’t agree on one or more issues — property, custody, support, or the divorce itself — and ask a judge to decide. The process has a hard floor built into state law: at least 60 days of Arkansas residency before filing, at least three months of residency before a decree can issue, and at least 30 days between the filing and the final judgment.¹ Real contested cases run much longer than that floor. Several months is fast; a year or more is normal when custody or significant assets are in dispute.

How Long It Takes and Why

Residency is the first gate. Either you or your spouse must have been physically present in Arkansas for 60 days before the complaint is filed. The statute uses actual presence, so an Arkansas driver’s license or an Arkansas-titled property, standing alone, won’t do it.¹

After filing, the court cannot grant a final decree until 30 days have passed and one of the parties has maintained actual Arkansas residence for three full months before judgment. If your spouse was never personally served and never appeared, the filing spouse must have held continuous Arkansas residency for all three months.¹ Those rules apply whether the case is contested or uncontested.

What stretches the calendar beyond those minimums is the contest itself. Each disputed issue adds discovery, hearings, and often expert reports. The deeper the disagreement, the longer the case.

Grounds You’ll Have to Prove

Arkansas recognizes both fault-based and no-fault grounds. The no-fault route requires 18 continuous months of separation without cohabiting. When that threshold is met, the court must grant the divorce regardless of who caused the split.²

In contested cases, the filing spouse often can’t wait 18 months, or the misconduct matters to custody or property, so a fault-based ground gets pleaded. Arkansas’s fault grounds include:²

Indignities — a pattern of behavior making married life intolerable, such as verbal abuse, humiliation, or persistent neglect. Courts expect evidence of a pattern, not isolated incidents.
Adultery — a sexual relationship with someone other than the spouse during the marriage.
Felony conviction — of either spouse. A prison sentence is not required; the conviction suffices.
Habitual drunkenness — addiction to alcohol for at least one year.
Cruel treatment — physical abuse or treatment severe enough to endanger life.

A separate ground exists for incurable insanity, which requires three consecutive years of institutional commitment, a prior adjudication of unsound mind, and supporting testimony from two physicians familiar with the condition.²

Filing, Service, and the Answer

The case starts when one spouse files a complaint in the circuit court of the county where either party lives. The complaint identifies the grounds, lays out the basic facts of the marriage, and describes what you’re asking the court for: property division, custody, support, alimony. The clerk issues a summons that goes with the complaint.

Service is usually accomplished by a sheriff’s deputy or private process server delivering the papers personally. If your spouse can’t be found after reasonable effort, Arkansas permits service by publication in a newspaper, though courts examine that method closely. Filing fees vary by county and typically run a few hundred dollars.

Once served, your spouse has 30 days to file a written answer admitting or denying each allegation and raising any defenses.³ A spouse who wants different terms — more custody time, a larger share of property, alimony — can file a counterclaim along with the answer. Missing the 30-day deadline is risky. The filing spouse can request a default judgment, and the court may grant the divorce on the complaint’s terms without the other side’s input.

Temporary Orders While the Case Is Pending

A contested case can run for a year. Life doesn’t pause. Either party can ask the court for temporary orders covering who stays in the house, who pays which bills, the week-to-week custody schedule, and whether one spouse needs financial support in the meantime.

Judges typically decide these motions on affidavits and brief testimony rather than a full hearing. Temporary orders stay in effect until the final decree. They are not supposed to predict the final outcome, but they carry practical weight: a parent who holds temporary primary custody for many months has the stability argument on their side at trial. Losing ground early is harder to reverse later.

Discovery

Once pleadings are in, both sides move into discovery — the formal exchange of information. Arkansas Rule of Civil Procedure 26 governs it and permits several tools:⁴

Interrogatories, which are written questions answered under oath. These usually target income, assets, debts, and conduct.
Requests for production of documents such as bank statements, tax returns, pay stubs, business records, and relevant communications.
Depositions, where a witness is questioned under oath in person with a court reporter transcribing. Attorneys use them to lock in testimony and test weak points.
Subpoenas to third parties — banks, employers, medical providers — for records or testimony.

Discovery is where hidden assets surface and where financial claims get tested. If one spouse suspects the other of understating income or concealing accounts, production requests and third-party subpoenas are the primary tools. Employment records verify income for support calculations; bank records reveal undisclosed accounts and suspicious transfers.

If a spouse stonewalls, the other side can file a motion to compel. If the court orders production and the party still refuses, judges can impose sanctions — fines, or even ruling disputed facts against the uncooperative party. Courts may also consider social media posts when they contradict claims made in filings.

Dividing Property

Arkansas starts from a presumption of a 50/50 split of marital property. The court can depart from that split when equal division would be inequitable, and if it does, the order must explain the reasons in writing.⁵

Factors that justify a deviation include the length of the marriage; each spouse’s age, health, occupation, income, employability, and vocational skills; each party’s contribution to acquiring or preserving marital property, including contributions as a homemaker; and the federal income tax consequences of the division.⁵

Marital vs. Separate Property

Marital property is broadly anything acquired by either spouse during the marriage, regardless of whose name is on the title. Separate property — what you owned before the marriage, plus anything received by gift, inheritance, or trust distribution — stays with the owning spouse. Arkansas protects separate property unusually strongly: the asset itself is excluded, and so are the increase in its value and any income it generates. Workers’ compensation benefits, personal injury awards for permanent disability, and Social Security benefits are also excluded.⁵

Keeping separate property separate takes discipline. Courts look at whether an asset was mixed with marital funds or used for shared purposes. An inheritance deposited into a joint account and used to pay the mortgage for years is a much harder argument than one kept in a dedicated account.

Retirement Accounts

Retirement benefits earned during the marriage — 401(k)s, pensions, state retirement — are marital property. Dividing them requires a qualified domestic relations order, a separate court order that directs the plan administrator to pay a portion to the non-employee spouse. For Arkansas public employees, the Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System requires a specific model order and will reject deviations; the signed order must be filed with the retirement system, and a copy of the divorce decree alone is not enough.⁶

Custody and Child Support

Arkansas law creates a rebuttable presumption that joint custody is in the best interest of the child. The court starts from the position that both parents will share custody unless there’s a clear reason otherwise. The presumption can be overcome by clear and convincing evidence that joint custody isn’t in the child’s best interest, or by specific circumstances such as domestic violence.⁷

When the court weighs custody, it looks at which parent is more likely to encourage the child’s relationship with the other parent, the child’s preference if the child is old enough to reason, and the stability each parent offers. If a parent has committed domestic violence, the court must consider the effect of that violence on the child’s welfare, even when the child wasn’t physically present during the abuse.⁷

How Support Is Calculated

Child support follows Arkansas’s Child Support Guidelines, which use an income-sharing model. Both parents’ gross incomes are combined, each parent’s share of that total is calculated, and that share is applied to a basic support obligation drawn from the state’s chart based on combined income and the number of children.⁸ Health insurance premiums, extraordinary medical costs, and childcare are added on top and split proportionally.

If a parent is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, the court can impute income — calculating support based on what the parent could earn rather than what they actually earn. There’s a rebuttable presumption that both parents can work full-time, but it’s not automatic. The court must consider the parent’s work history, job skills, education, health, criminal record, and local job market before imputing income.⁹ A parent caring for very young or disabled children may have a legitimate reason for reduced employment.

Support orders are enforceable through wage withholding, tax refund interception, and contempt proceedings. Either parent can petition to modify support when financial circumstances change significantly.

Parenting Classes

When divorcing parents have minor children, the court may require each parent to complete at least two hours of parenting classes focused on divorce issues, or to attend mediation on custody and visitation. Each parent pays their own cost. A party can ask to be excused for good cause, such as a domestic violence history.¹⁰

Alimony

Alimony is not automatic. The court awards it when the circumstances and the nature of the case make it reasonable.¹¹ Long marriages in which one spouse set aside a career for the household are the classic case, but the judge has broad discretion.

Rehabilitative alimony — fixed payments for a set period to help a spouse become self-supporting through education or training — is the most common form. The court can require a rehabilitation plan and cut off support if the recipient doesn’t follow it. Either party can petition to modify alimony based on a significant and material change of circumstances.¹¹

Unless the order says otherwise, alimony ends automatically on the earlier of the recipient’s remarriage, the recipient living full-time with another person in an intimate cohabiting relationship, or the death of either party. It also ends if the recipient has a child with someone else and a court orders that person to pay support, which the statute treats as the equivalent of remarriage.¹¹ Failure to pay court-ordered alimony can lead to contempt, wage garnishment, or jail time.

Mediation and Settlement

Not every contested case ends at trial. Judges strongly encourage settlement and often schedule pretrial conferences to push the parties toward agreement. Mediation, in which a neutral third party helps both sides negotiate, is a common tool. In cases involving children, the court can order mediation focused on custody and visitation under the same statute that authorizes parenting classes.¹⁰

Mediators in family cases charge by the hour, and each party pays a share. Compared to a multi-day trial with expert witnesses, mediation is almost always cheaper, and even a partial settlement that narrows the disputed issues saves trial time and fees. If you have a safety concern, such as a history of domestic violence, you can ask the court to waive the mediation requirement.

Trial and Appeal

If mediation fails to produce a full agreement, the case goes to trial. Arkansas divorce trials are heard by a judge; there is no jury. Both sides present evidence, call witnesses, and argue the law. Financial records, expert reports from business valuators, child psychologists, or vocational experts, and witness testimony all factor into the judge’s decisions.

Trials run from a few hours to several days, depending on the complexity of the property, the intensity of the custody dispute, and the number of witnesses. This is where the discovery phase pays off or fails. Evidence you didn’t gather during discovery generally can’t be introduced for the first time at trial. The judge’s ruling becomes the final divorce decree.

Either side can appeal if they believe the judge made a legal error. A notice of appeal must be filed within 30 days of the judgment.¹² Appeals are not retrials. The appellate court reviews whether the trial judge applied the law correctly, not whether it would have decided the facts differently. Successful appeals in divorce cases are relatively uncommon because trial judges have wide discretion in dividing property and setting custody.

After the Decree: Taxes, Insurance, Enforcement

Two practical consequences hit as soon as the decree is signed, and planning for both during the case prevents expensive surprises.

Alimony and Federal Taxes

For divorce agreements finalized after December 31, 2018, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act eliminated the federal tax deduction for alimony. The paying spouse cannot deduct the payments, and the recipient does not report them as income. This remains in effect for 2026 and applies to all post-2018 agreements, plus older agreements that were later modified to adopt the new treatment. Because the payer gets no tax benefit, the effective cost of each alimony dollar is higher than under the old rules, and that matters in negotiations.

Health Insurance and COBRA

Divorce is a qualifying event under the federal COBRA law. A spouse who was covered under the other spouse’s employer plan can elect to continue that coverage for up to 36 months after the divorce.¹³ COBRA applies to private employers with 20 or more employees and most state and local government plans, but not to federal employee plans or church plans. The catch is cost: COBRA is often significantly more expensive than active-employee coverage, because the former spouse’s employer no longer subsidizes the premium. Some states have “mini-COBRA” laws extending similar protections to employees of smaller companies.

Enforcing the Decree

The decree is a court order, and both parties must follow it. When one side refuses to transfer property, skips child support payments, or ignores the custody schedule, the other can file a motion for contempt. Courts have broad enforcement power: fines, wage garnishment, asset seizure, and incarceration for repeated violations.

For child support, the Arkansas Office of Child Support Enforcement can collect overdue payments through wage withholding, tax refund interception, and license suspensions. These administrative tools work alongside the court’s contempt authority. When a parent consistently violates custody or visitation orders, the court can also modify the custody arrangement — sometimes a more effective remedy than fines. Property division orders are enforceable through writs of execution, and when a spouse refuses to sign a required title transfer, the court can enter an order that has the same legal effect as the missing signature.

1
Justia. Arkansas Code 9-12-307 – Matters That Must Be Proved
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Justia. Arkansas Code 9-12-301 – Grounds for Divorce
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Arkansas Law Help. Divorce
4
Supreme Court of Arkansas. Recommendations to Revise Discovery Rules – Section: Rule 26. General Provisions Governing Discovery
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Justia. Arkansas Code 9-12-315 – Division of Property – Definition
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Arkansas Public Employees Retirement System (APERS). Qualified Domestic Relations Order (QDRO)
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Justia. Arkansas Code 9-13-101 – Award of Custody
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Justia. Arkansas Code Appendix Administrative Order Number 10 – Child Support Guidelines – Section V Computation of Child Support
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Justia. Arkansas Code Appendix Administrative Order Number 10 – Child Support Guidelines – Section III Gross Income
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Justia. Arkansas Code 9-12-322 – Divorcing Parents to Attend Parenting Class
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Justia. Arkansas Code 9-12-312 – Alimony – Child Support – Bond
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Justia. Arkansas Code 16-91-105 – Time and Method of Taking Appeal
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U.S. Department of Labor. FAQs on COBRA Continuation Health Coverage for Workers