Maryland Separation Agreement Form (CC-DR-116): Filing and Hearing

Maryland’s marital settlement agreement, Form CC-DR-116, is the document you and your spouse sign to lock in how you’ll divide property, handle support, and share time with your children, and then file with the circuit court alongside your Complaint for Absolute Divorce. Getting it right is what makes an uncontested divorce actually uncontested: a judge reviews the agreement before granting the divorce, and gaps or errors send you back to the beginning.

When This Is the Right Form

CC-DR-116 is built for one situation: both spouses want a divorce and have already agreed on every major issue. Maryland recognizes three grounds for absolute divorce — mutual consent, six-month separation, and irreconcilable differences — and mutual consent is where this form does the work.¹ To use mutual consent, you must submit a written settlement agreement signed by both spouses that resolves alimony, property distribution, and the care, custody, access, and support of any minor or dependent children.²

The advantage of mutual consent is that there is no mandatory separation period. Six-month separation, by contrast, requires you to have lived apart without interruption for at least six months before filing. With a signed, complete agreement, you can file right away.²

What to Gather Before You Start

The form itself is only a few pages. Filling it out well means having your financial picture assembled first, because Maryland treats as marital property everything either spouse acquired from the date of marriage through the date of divorce, regardless of whose name is on the title.³ Before you sit down with the form, pull together:

Recent statements for checking, savings, brokerage, and other financial accounts.
Current valuations for 401(k)s, pensions, IRAs, and other retirement savings. Contributions made during the marriage count as marital property.
Addresses of any real estate you own, outstanding mortgage balances, and the name on each mortgage.
Balances for credit cards, auto loans, student loans, and other shared or individual debts.
Recent pay stubs and tax returns for both spouses, especially if children are involved and child support has to be calculated.
Health, life, and auto insurance details, particularly if either spouse currently covers the other.

Property acquired before the marriage, received as a gift from a third party, or inherited is generally excluded from the marital estate, along with anything traceable to those sources.³ Sorting assets into the two buckets before you start the form saves arguments later.

How to Complete the Form

The form (revised October 2025) opens with a header block: circuit court name, case number if you already have one, and names, addresses, and phone numbers for both spouses. Below that you enter the date and place of the marriage. A “Restricted Information” checkbox at the top lets you flag the document as containing confidential financial data, which limits public access. The form advises listing only the last four digits of any account numbers.³

Alimony

The alimony section uses checkboxes. You indicate whether one spouse will pay the other a set dollar amount per month, when payments start, and whether they run for a limited period or indefinitely. The form notes that the court keeps the power to modify alimony unless you specifically indicate that the terms cannot be modified.³ If neither spouse wants alimony, you can check the waiver box. Understand that waiving alimony in a settlement agreement is usually permanent.

Marital Property

The property section asks you to list categories of assets and state how each will be divided: real estate (by address, not legal description), vehicles, bank accounts, retirement accounts and pensions, and personal property. For real estate, the central question is who keeps the home and who pays the outstanding mortgage. The form warns you to talk to your mortgage holder or a lawyer about transferring a mortgage or title, because agreeing between yourselves does not release either spouse from the lender’s obligation.³

The form gives you blank lines to list retirement accounts and pensions but tells you outright that there is no court form for dividing these assets. If either spouse has a pension or employer-sponsored plan, you will almost certainly need a separate order to actually transfer funds. See the QDRO section below.

Custody and Parenting Time

If you have children under 18, the form directs you to attach a completed Parenting Plan using Form CC-DR-109, the Maryland Parenting Plan Tool. CC-DR-116 does not contain detailed custody fields on its own; it references the attached parenting plan and asks you to check a box confirming one exists. The parenting plan addresses both physical custody (where the children live) and legal custody (who makes major decisions about education, health care, and religion).

Child Support

Maryland calculates child support using income-shares guidelines that consider both parents’ gross income, the number of children, health insurance costs, and extraordinary medical expenses. The form flags something important: child support is owed to the children and cannot be waived by the parents. The court has authority to set support regardless of what you agreed to.³ A judge will accept your agreed amount if it lines up with the Child Support Guidelines Worksheet, or if a deviation serves the children’s best interests.

If your agreement includes child support, the statute requires you to attach a completed guidelines worksheet.² The worksheet is Form CC-DR-034 for primary physical custody arrangements. Fill it out using both parents’ actual income figures so the judge can verify your agreed amount at the hearing.

The Retirement Account Trap

Dividing a retirement account is one of the trickiest parts of any divorce settlement, and CC-DR-116 is upfront about it: “You will need a special order to divide or transfer retirement assets.”³ That order is a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, or QDRO.

A QDRO directs a retirement plan administrator to pay part of a participant’s benefits to a former spouse. For plans covered by federal ERISA rules, which include most private-employer 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and pensions, the administrator cannot pay anyone other than the plan participant without a valid QDRO, no matter what your divorce decree says.⁴ This is hard to fix after the divorce is final, so address it during the settlement process, not after.

IRAs work differently. They don’t use QDROs. You divide an IRA through a trustee-to-trustee transfer authorized by the divorce decree, and if the transfer is incident to the divorce, no taxes or penalties are triggered.

Signing

Both spouses must sign the completed CC-DR-116. The form itself does not include a notary acknowledgment block, but notarization is standard practice and strengthens the agreement’s enforceability if anyone later disputes whether the signing was voluntary. Many Maryland family law practitioners treat it as a near-universal step. It costs around $15 per signature.

Sign at least two originals so each spouse keeps one, and store your copy somewhere secure. You’ll need the original for the court filing, and replacing a lost original creates unnecessary complications.

The first page carries a warning worth reading carefully: “This agreement is a contract, and you may be giving up important rights by signing it.” The form specifically recommends consulting a lawyer if your spouse has an attorney, you own a business, or there are financial obligations tied to real property.³

Filing With the Complaint

CC-DR-116 does not go to the court on its own. You file it as an attachment to a Complaint for Absolute Divorce, Form CC-DR-020.¹ The complaint is what formally asks the court to grant the divorce. The settlement agreement is your evidence that all outstanding issues are resolved.

File both documents with the Clerk of the Circuit Court in the county where either spouse lives. You may also be able to file in a county where the defendant works or has a place of business. The filing fee is $165 if you file without an attorney, or $185 if you are represented. The extra $20 is a surcharge that applies when an attorney enters an appearance.⁵ If you can’t afford the fee, you can request a waiver.

Two additional requirements apply to a mutual consent filing: neither party can file a written objection to the settlement before the divorce hearing, and the court must be satisfied that any terms affecting minor or dependent children are in the children’s best interests.²

What the Judge Does at the Hearing

After filing, the court schedules a divorce hearing. A judge reviews the settlement agreement to confirm it addresses everything required — alimony, property, and children’s issues if applicable. For the child provisions, the judge independently evaluates whether the terms serve the children’s best interests and is not bound to accept what you agreed to. The form makes this explicit for child support: the court can establish support regardless of any agreement the parties reached.³

If the judge approves the agreement, the court issues a judgment of absolute divorce. The agreement can be either incorporated or merged into the decree, and the distinction affects how you enforce it later.

Incorporation vs. Merger

When an agreement is merged into the divorce decree, it loses its separate identity as a contract and becomes entirely a court order, enforceable through contempt. When an agreement is incorporated but not merged, it survives as an independent contract while also being enforceable as a court order.⁶ Incorporation without merger is the more protective option for most couples because it gives you two enforcement paths: contempt in family court, or a separate breach-of-contract action.

Under Section 8-105, the court can modify any incorporated provision, merged or not, that is subject to modification under Section 8-103 of the Family Law article. In practice, child support and custody remain modifiable regardless of what your agreement says, while property division terms are typically final.

What Can Get an Agreement Set Aside

Maryland law allows spouses to make valid and enforceable agreements about alimony, support, property rights, and personal rights.⁷ Courts can still set aside an agreement that fails basic fairness standards. Grounds include:

Unconscionability. If the terms are so one-sided they shock the conscience of the court, the agreement can be voided. Fairness is judged at the time of signing, not by how things turned out.
Fraud or hidden assets. Each spouse needs enough information about the other’s finances to understand what they’re agreeing to. Concealing significant assets or lying about income makes the agreement vulnerable.
Duress or coercion. The agreement is invalid if one spouse was overwhelmed by fear or threats and could not exercise free judgment when signing.
Undue influence. Closely related to duress, this covers situations where one spouse exploited a position of power or trust to pressure the other into unfavorable terms.

Agreements that don’t show obvious unfairness on their face are presumed valid, and the spouse challenging the agreement carries the burden of proof. Having each spouse consult an independent attorney before signing is one of the strongest safeguards against a later challenge. It’s not required, but a judge is far less likely to find that a spouse didn’t understand the deal when that spouse had their own lawyer review it.

Issues the Form Doesn’t Handle on Its Own

A few important matters sit next to the settlement agreement rather than inside it. Address them while you’re negotiating, not after the divorce is entered.

Health insurance. If one spouse carries the other on an employer health plan, divorce is a qualifying event that triggers federal COBRA rights. The covered spouse can continue group coverage for up to 36 months, but the covered spouse or the employee must notify the plan administrator within 60 days of the divorce, or COBRA eligibility is lost.⁸ COBRA premiums include the full cost of coverage plus a 2% administrative fee, with no employer subsidy. Say in the agreement who pays during any transition.

Alimony taxes. For any divorce or separation agreement executed after 2018, alimony payments are not deductible by the payer and not taxable to the recipient.⁹ Factor this in: alimony no longer produces a tax benefit for the payer or a tax burden for the recipient.

Property transfers. Under 26 U.S.C. § 1041, transfers of property between spouses (or former spouses) incident to divorce trigger no capital gains, and the receiving spouse takes over the transferor’s tax basis.¹⁰ The carryover basis matters. If your spouse transfers stock they bought for $10,000 that’s now worth $50,000, you take the $10,000 basis and owe capital gains on the $40,000 difference when you sell. Dividing assets purely by current market value can leave one spouse with a worse deal than the numbers suggest.

Social Security. If your marriage lasted at least 10 years, you may qualify for divorced-spouse benefits on your former spouse’s earnings record once you meet age and marital-status requirements.¹¹ Neither spouse can bargain this away in the agreement — the benefit is governed by federal law and doesn’t reduce the other spouse’s benefit.

Military and federal benefits. If your spouse is an active-duty or retired service member, dividing military retired pay involves federal rules under the Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act, including the 10/10 rule for direct DFAS payment.¹² For federal civilian employees, a former spouse’s survivor annuity under FERS depends on separate election or court order.¹³ The separation agreement alone won’t bind DFAS or OPM; if either applies to you, get a lawyer.

1
Maryland Courts. Divorce
2
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code Family Law 7-103 – Divorce
3
Maryland Courts. Maryland Marital Settlement Agreement Form CC-DR-116
4
U.S. Department of Labor. Qualified Domestic Relations Orders Under ERISA
5
New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. Revised Schedule of Charges, Costs and Fees Charged by the Clerks of the Circuit Courts
6
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code Family Law 8-105 – Enforcement Authority of Court and Modification
7
Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code Family Law 8-101 – Deed or Agreement Between Husband and Wife
8
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. COBRA Continuation Coverage Questions and Answers
9
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 452, Alimony and Separate Maintenance
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1041 – Transfers of Property Between Spouses or Incident to Divorce
11
Social Security Administration. Code of Federal Regulations 404.331 – Who Is Entitled to Wife’s or Husband’s Benefits as a Divorced Spouse
12
Defense Finance and Accounting Service. Frequently Asked Questions
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U.S. Office of Personnel Management. I Have Divorced – Is My Former Husband or Wife Eligible for a Survivor Benefit