Texas Family Law Code: Marriage, Divorce, Custody & Support

The Texas Family Code is the state statute that governs marriage, divorce, property division, child custody, child support, paternity, and protective orders. It sets who can marry, how a marriage ends, how community property is split, how custody and visitation work, and what happens when someone ignores a court order. Several pieces of Texas family law work differently from the rules in most other states, so the specific provisions matter whether you’re planning a wedding, filing for divorce, or sorting out custody.

Who Can Marry in Texas

Chapter 2 of the Family Code controls marriage. Both people must be at least 18. A person under 18 can marry only if a court has removed the legal disabilities of being a minor, and no county clerk can issue a license without that order.¹ Texas does not recognize informal marriages involving minors, even with parental consent. Any prior marriage must be legally ended before a new license can issue.

You apply at a county clerk’s office with valid ID and, if you were previously married, proof the earlier marriage was dissolved. Texas then imposes a 72-hour waiting period between license issuance and the ceremony. Two groups skip it: active-duty military members and couples who completed a state-approved premarital education course within the prior year.¹ The license expires after 90 days if no ceremony takes place.

Informal (Common-Law) Marriage

Texas is one of the few states that still recognizes informal marriage. To establish one, you and your partner must agree to be married, live together in Texas as spouses, and represent yourselves to others as married. Joint accounts, shared property, and introducing each other as husband or wife all serve as evidence. No license or ceremony is required, but once established, an informal marriage carries the same legal weight as a ceremonial one.

If the couple separates and neither person files a legal proceeding to prove the marriage within two years, the law presumes no informal marriage was formed.¹ That presumption can be overcome with strong evidence, but waiting makes proving the marriage much harder.

Void and Voidable Marriages

Some marriages are void from the start, with no legal effect regardless of what the spouses want. The grounds include bigamy, incest within prohibited degrees (parent-child, grandparent-grandchild, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews), an underage spouse without a court order removing the disabilities of minority, and a current or former stepparent-stepchild relationship.

A voidable marriage is treated as valid unless a court grants an annulment. Grounds include being under the influence of alcohol or drugs during the ceremony, permanent impotency unknown to the other spouse, fraud or duress, and mental incapacity to consent.² Spouses in a voidable marriage can choose to stay married. A void marriage is invalid whether anyone asks a court about it or not.

Filing for Divorce

Before a Texas court can hear your case, at least one spouse must have lived in Texas for the preceding six months and in the county of filing for the preceding 90 days.² Filing fees generally run $250 to $350 depending on the county, with additional costs for service.

After the petition is filed, the court cannot grant the divorce until at least 60 days have passed. The waiting period has a narrow exception: it does not apply when the responding spouse has been convicted of or received deferred adjudication for family violence against the petitioner, or when the petitioner holds an active protective order against the respondent based on family violence during the marriage.²

Grounds for Divorce

Texas allows both no-fault and fault-based divorce. The most common ground is insupportability, meaning the marriage has become unsustainable because of discord or conflict with no reasonable expectation of reconciliation.³ Neither spouse has to prove the other did anything wrong.

Fault grounds include cruelty, adultery, conviction of a felony with imprisonment for at least one year, abandonment for at least one year, living apart for at least three years, and confinement in a mental hospital for at least three years. Pleading a fault ground matters because it can influence how the court divides property and whether maintenance is awarded.

Mediation Before Trial

Courts can order both parties to mediation before trial, and if the judge orders it, you must participate. The exception is family violence: if you have experienced violence from the other party, you can file a written objection to the referral before the order becomes final.

If mediation produces a written agreement that includes a prominently displayed statement (bold, capital letters, or underlined) saying the agreement cannot be revoked, and both parties and their attorneys sign it, the agreement becomes binding and irrevocable. Either side can then ask the court to enter judgment based on it, and the other side generally cannot back out.

Community Property and Debt

Texas is a community property state. Nearly everything you or your spouse earn or acquire during the marriage belongs to both of you, regardless of whose name is on the account or title.⁴ That covers wages, real estate, retirement contributions, and investment gains built up during the marriage.

Separate property stays with the spouse who owns it: assets owned before the marriage, inheritances, gifts directed to one spouse individually, and personal injury settlements other than the portion for lost wages. If you claim something is separate, the burden is on you to prove it with clear and convincing evidence, usually through financial records, deeds, or statements tracing the asset back to its separate origin.

The court divides community property in a way that is “just and right,” which is not automatically 50/50. Judges weigh each spouse’s earning capacity, education, health, and contributions. Fault in the breakup, such as adultery or cruelty, can tilt the division, and a spouse who hid assets or wasted community funds may receive less.

Retirement accounts, pensions, and employer stock options earned during the marriage count as community property. Splitting most of them requires a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, a separate court order directing the plan administrator to divide the benefits.⁵

How Debt Is Treated

Texas does not really have “community debt” the way most people imagine. A debt belongs to the spouse who incurred it, to the other spouse, or to both, and the type of property a creditor can reach depends on who owes.

Your separate property generally cannot be seized for your spouse’s debts. Joint community property is reachable by either spouse’s creditors. For a contract debt one spouse incurs alone, the creditor can reach that spouse’s separate property, that spouse’s share of community property, and joint community property, but not the other spouse’s separate or sole-management community property. For a tort by one spouse, the creditor can reach the entire non-exempt community estate. For necessaries like food, shelter, and medical care, both spouses are personally liable and nearly the whole marital estate is exposed.

This matters at divorce because the court’s division of debt between you and your ex does not override a creditor’s existing rights. If a creditor can legally collect from certain property, a decree reassigning the debt to your ex-spouse won’t stop collection against you.

When Spousal Maintenance Is Available

Spousal maintenance in Texas is harder to get than alimony in many other states. The requesting spouse must first show they will lack enough property after divorce to meet their minimum reasonable needs, and must also prove at least one of the following:⁶

The other spouse was convicted of or received deferred adjudication for a family violence offense committed during the marriage, either within two years before filing or while the case was pending.
The couple was married for at least ten years and the requesting spouse cannot earn enough to meet basic needs.
A physical or mental disability prevents the requesting spouse from earning sufficient income.
The requesting spouse is the primary caretaker of a child of the marriage who needs substantial care because of a disability.

The court-ordered amount is capped at the lesser of $5,000 per month or 20% of the paying spouse’s gross monthly income. Duration depends on the length of the marriage: up to five years for family violence or a 10–20 year marriage, up to seven years for a 20–30 year marriage, and up to ten years for a 30+ year marriage.

Maintenance ends automatically if the receiving spouse remarries or begins living with a new partner in a relationship resembling marriage. Either side can seek modification or termination if circumstances change significantly. Lifetime maintenance is rare and almost always tied to a permanent disability.

Custody and Visitation

Texas calls custody “conservatorship” and decides every custody question using the best interest of the child.⁷ The default is joint managing conservatorship, where both parents share decision-making authority, but one parent is usually named the primary conservator with the exclusive right to decide where the child lives.

Courts look at emotional and physical needs, each parent’s ability to provide a stable home, and how involved each parent has been. Evidence of domestic violence, substance abuse, or neglect can sharply limit a parent’s rights. A child who is at least 12 can tell the judge which parent they want to live with, but the judge is not bound by that preference.

Standard Possession Order

When parents live within 100 miles of each other, the standard possession order sets the default schedule for the parent who is not the primary conservator. During the school year, that typically means Thursday evenings from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., the first, third, and fifth weekends of each month from Friday at 6:00 p.m. to Sunday at 6:00 p.m., and 30 consecutive days of summer possession (defaulting to July 1 through July 31 unless the visiting parent selects different dates and notifies the other parent in writing by April 1).

Holiday possession rotates by even and odd years for spring break, Thanksgiving, and the Christmas break. Each parent also gets their respective Mother’s Day or Father’s Day weekend. Parents can agree to a different schedule, and the court can adjust the standard order when circumstances warrant.

Some orders also include a right of first refusal, which requires the parent currently with the child to offer that time to the other parent before using a babysitter or relative when they’ll be away for a set period. These provisions are not automatic. They have to be agreed to or ordered specifically.

How Child Support Is Calculated

Both parents are legally obligated to support their children. Texas calculates support as a percentage of the noncustodial parent’s monthly net resources:⁸

One child: 20%
Two children: 25%
Three children: 30%
Four children: 35%
Five or more children: 40% (not less than this amount for six or more)

The percentages apply to the obligor’s monthly net resources up to a statutory cap, which is adjusted every six years. As of September 1, 2025, the cap is $11,700 per month, which puts the maximum presumptive support for one child at $2,340 per month. If the paying parent earns more, the court can order additional support above the guideline amount, but the parent asking for the increase has to justify it based on the child’s needs.

When the paying parent supports children from other relationships, the percentages are reduced. Courts can also deviate from the guidelines for special circumstances like extraordinary medical needs, educational expenses, or the child’s own financial resources.

Support generally continues until the child turns 18 or graduates from high school, whichever comes later, and ends earlier if the child marries, is emancipated, or dies. If the child has a disability that prevents self-support, the court can order support for an indefinite period.⁹

Establishing Paternity

When parents are not married, the father has no automatic legal rights. Paternity has to be established before a court will issue custody or support orders. There are two paths.

The simpler option is an Acknowledgment of Paternity, a voluntary form both parents sign, usually at the hospital shortly after birth, through an entity certified by the Texas Attorney General’s office. Once filed with the Vital Statistics Unit, it carries the same legal weight as a court order.¹⁰ Either parent can rescind it within 60 days of filing or before any court proceeding involving the child begins, whichever comes first. After that, challenging the acknowledgment requires a court action and proof of fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact.

The second path is a parentage lawsuit. The mother, the alleged father, the child, or a government agency can file. If the child has no presumed, acknowledged, or adjudicated father, the suit can be filed at any time, even after the child is an adult. When a presumed father exists (for example, a man married to the mother at birth), the deadline to challenge paternity is generally four years from the child’s birth, with narrow exceptions.¹¹

Protective Orders and Family Violence

If you have experienced family violence, you can seek a protective order. The court must find two things: that family violence occurred and that it is likely to occur again.¹² The order can require the other person to stay away from your home, workplace, and children’s school, and can prohibit communication or contact.

A protective order lasts for the period stated in the order, up to a maximum of two years. If no duration is specified, it expires on the second anniversary of the date it was issued. Courts can extend an order past two years if the abusive person committed a felony involving family violence, caused serious bodily injury, or was already the subject of two or more prior protective orders.¹²

A protective order is not the same as a temporary restraining order issued in a divorce case. A TRO typically lasts 14 days and addresses matters like freezing accounts or preventing one spouse from selling property. Violating a protective order is a criminal offense; violating a TRO leads to civil contempt. The practical difference is law enforcement backup, which a standard TRO does not provide.

Enforcement of Court Orders

Texas takes enforcement seriously, and the tools vary depending on what order was violated.

Child Support

The Texas Attorney General’s Child Support Division has enforcement powers beyond what a private attorney can use. The AG’s office can intercept federal and state tax refunds, suspend passports, seize lottery winnings, and report delinquent support to credit bureaus.¹³ Courts can also order income withholding directly from the paying parent’s employer.

A parent who falls behind can be held in contempt. Contempt for failure to pay child support can result in up to 180 days of confinement per violation, plus fines and an order to pay back support. Courts often place the delinquent parent on community supervision first, with conditions like financial counseling, employment services, and regular catch-up payments. Violating those conditions can lead to jail.¹⁴

Custody and Visitation

If a parent refuses to follow a custody or visitation order, the other parent can file a motion for enforcement. The court can hold the violating parent in contempt, impose make-up visitation, modify the custody arrangement, order supervised visitation for repeated violations, and award attorney fees.

Spousal Maintenance

Unpaid maintenance can be enforced through wage garnishment and asset seizure. Contempt proceedings can result in fines or incarceration in extreme situations, following the same general framework as child support enforcement.

Tax Treatment of Support Payments

Federal tax rules for child support and spousal maintenance work very differently, and getting them wrong can create a surprise tax bill.

Child support is tax-neutral. The paying parent cannot deduct it, and the receiving parent does not report it as income.¹⁵

Spousal maintenance depends on when the divorce or separation agreement was finalized. For agreements executed after December 31, 2018, maintenance is also tax-neutral: no deduction for the payer, no taxable income for the recipient. For agreements finalized before 2019, the old rules still apply. The payer deducts, and the recipient reports the payments as taxable income. If a pre-2019 agreement was modified after 2018, the new tax-neutral treatment applies only if the modification expressly states that the payments are no longer deductible or includable in income.¹⁵

1
State of Texas. Texas Family Code Chapter 2 – The Marriage Relationship
2
State of Texas. Texas Family Code Chapter 6 – Suit for Dissolution of Marriage
3
State of Texas. Texas Family Code 6.001 – Insupportability
4
State of Texas. Texas Family Code 3.002 – Community Property
5
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – QDRO Qualified Domestic Relations Order
6
State of Texas. Texas Family Code 8.051 – Eligibility for Maintenance
7
State of Texas. Texas Family Code 153.002 – Best Interest of Child
8
State of Texas. Texas Family Code 154.125 – Application of Guidelines to Net Resources
9
State of Texas. Texas Family Code 154.001 – Support of Child
10
Office of the Attorney General. Acknowledgment of Paternity AOP
11
State of Texas. Texas Family Code Chapter 160 – Uniform Parentage Act
12
Justia Law. Texas Family Code Chapter 85 – Issuance of Protective Order
13
Office of the Attorney General. Child Support in Texas
14
Texas Law Help. Enforcing Your Child Support Orders on Your Own
15
Internal Revenue Service. Alimony, Child Support, Court Awards, Damages