Divorce Lawyer Austin: What Binds You the Moment You File

A divorce lawyer in Austin starts with what binds both spouses the moment a petition is filed: the Travis County standing order applies automatically and bars moving marital assets, cancelling insurance or changing beneficiaries, and Texas law bars a decree before the 60th day after filing, even if the spouses agree. Temporary orders are different, because one spouse has to ask the court for them. Here’s what attaches at filing and what doesn’t.

The automatic half surprises almost everyone. Three separate things attach at filing, with no hearing, no agreement and no signature from either spouse.

The requested half is the part people already expect. It is smaller than they think.

What a divorce lawyer Austin clients hire checks first

The Travis County Standing Order for Family Law Cases, effective January 1, 2020, applies automatically to a family case the moment it reaches the clerk. Nobody requests it. No judge signs it in your particular case. It governs both parties from filing forward.

Among other things, the standing order prohibits:

• removing or concealing a child from the other party
• disparaging the other party in front of the child
• harassing or threatening the other party
• harming a pet
• in divorce cases specifically, dissipating or transferring marital assets, cancelling insurance, and changing beneficiary designations

That last item does most of the damage. People breach the standing order routinely without knowing it exists. Dropping a spouse from a health plan feels like household administration. Shifting savings into an account in one name feels like prudence. Under the standing order, either move can amount to a violation of a court order rather than ordinary money management.

The 60-day clock runs from filing, and agreement does not shorten it

Tex. Fam. Code § 6.702(a) bars a court from granting a divorce before the 60th day after someone files the petition, which makes the 61st day the earliest realistic decree date. Both spouses agreeing changes nothing. The waiting period is not a scheduling courtesy — it is a statutory floor, and a Travis judge cannot waive it because the parties get along.

Section 6.702(c) allows exactly two exceptions, and both turn on family violence. One reaches a respondent with a conviction or deferred adjudication for a family-violence offense against the other spouse or a member of the household. The other reaches a petitioner holding an active protective order or a magistrate’s emergency protection order against the respondent arising from family violence. Nothing else qualifies. The full text sits in Chapter 6 of the Texas Family Code.

The community presumption attaches with nobody invoking it

Section 3.003 presumes all property either spouse possesses at dissolution is community property, and it puts the burden on the party claiming otherwise to prove it by clear and convincing evidence — a standard the legislature wrote into the statute itself. That presumption needs no motion either. It runs from day one.

Section 3.002 defines community property as everything other than separate property that either spouse acquires during marriage. Separate property comes from the Texas Constitution, art. XVI, § 15: what a spouse owned or claimed before marriage, plus what arrives during marriage by gift, devise or descent. The practical effect is a default setting. Absent proof, the estate is community.

Residency: the rule a divorce lawyer Austin filers most often have backwards

Section 6.301 may be the most commonly misstated provision in Texas divorce. It requires that “either the petitioner or the respondent” has been a Texas domiciliary for the preceding six-month period and a resident of the county for the preceding 90-day period. It is not that the filing spouse must personally satisfy both tests — the statute reaches either party. Someone who arrived in Austin two months ago can still file here if the other spouse has held Travis County residence for 90 days.

Temporary orders: what a divorce lawyer Austin spouses retain has to ask for

Sections 6.501 and 6.502 cover temporary restraining orders and temporary orders during the case. Neither one happens on its own. Somebody files a motion, somebody sets a hearing, and a judge decides.

This is the line a divorce lawyer Austin clients hire draws early, because the two instruments look alike from the outside. The standing order is a countywide default that already binds both parties to a list of prohibitions. Temporary orders are case-specific relief — who stays in the house, who pays which bill, what the possession schedule looks like before trial — and they exist only because a party requested them. People routinely believe they already hold an order about the house. They hold a list of things they may not do.

Service, waiver, and what changed in December 2025

Section 6.408 governs service of citation. Section 6.4035 governs waiver of service. Sources cite those two swapped constantly, which matters the moment someone starts hunting for the right paperwork. One delivers the suit to the other spouse. The other lets that spouse agree to skip the delivery.

The waiver provision changed recently. Section 6.4035(e) now reads that the party executing the waiver may sign it using a digitized signature. H.B. 16, 89th Legislature, 2nd Called Session, Sec. 9.13, struck the word “not,” effective December 4, 2025. Any guidance published before that date still shows the old prohibition, and a great deal of it remains online.

Settlement: § 6.602 and § 6.604 do different work

A mediated settlement agreement under § 6.602 binds the parties if it does three things: state in prominently displayed, boldfaced, capitalized or underlined type that it is not subject to revocation, carry each party’s signature, and carry the signature of the parties’ attorneys if any. Meet all three and a party becomes entitled to judgment on it. Judicial discretion at that point is essentially spent.

Section 6.604 carries the title “Informal Settlement Conference” — not collaborative law, which occupies its own chapter. It imposes the same three formal requirements. The difference lands in what a court may do next: the court may decline to enter judgment on an informal settlement agreement if it finds the terms are not just and right. That is a genuine difference in leverage rather than a technicality. One route locks the deal. The other leaves a judge an exit.

“Just and right” does not mean equal

Section 7.001 directs the court to divide the estate in a manner it deems just and right, giving regard to each party’s rights and to any children. Most people read that phrase as a promise of half. Texas courts have never read it that way. Murff v. Murff, 615 S.W.2d 696 (Tex. 1981) remains the leading authority: trial courts hold wide discretion, and an unequal division is permissible.

The factors a court may weigh under Murff include the spouses’ relative earning capacities, education and business opportunities, ages and physical condition, financial condition and obligations, the size of each separate estate, and the nature of the property itself. None of that yields a formula. Division is requested relief, argued on evidence.

The Austin divorce process runs through generalist district courts

Gov’t Code Ch. 24, Subchapter D designates family district courts in a list of Texas counties, and Travis County does not appear on it. No statutorily designated Travis County family district court exists. The county’s 12 district courts — the 53rd, 98th, 126th, 200th, 201st, 250th, 261st, 345th, 353rd, 419th, 455th and 459th — are generalist benches that take family matters alongside everything else.

Under the local rules, new cases go out on a rotating basis among those courts at filing. Hearings and trials then land with whichever judge is available rather than staying with the filing court, and the county runs separate family and child-protection docket tracks. The Austin divorce process therefore hands you a cause number in one court and, often enough, a hearing in front of a different judge.

A Travis County divorce filing starts at the Travis County District Clerk, 1700 Guadalupe Street, 3rd Floor, Room 3.200. The fee for an original petition is $350 total effective January 1, 2026 — a $213 local consolidated component plus $137 state consolidated. Attorney e-filing through eFileTexas is mandatory statewide, not a Travis rule, and self-represented filers fall outside the mandate.

Associate judges, and a deadline measured in working days

Associate judges hear family matters in Travis County, so the first ruling on temporary orders often comes from an associate judge rather than an elected district judge. Under Tex. Fam. Code §§ 201.015 and 201.1042, a party who wants the referring court to review an associate judge’s proposed order must request a de novo hearing within three working days.

Three working days is short. It starts running while people are still reacting to the ruling, and it does not wait for anyone to gather their thoughts. Miss it, and the proposed order stands.

Why a divorce lawyer Austin residents consult will mention the public file

Section 6.411 makes divorce pleadings confidential only in counties with a population of 3.4 million or more. Travis County’s population runs about 1.39 million. The threshold does not reach it, so an Austin divorce file sits in the public court record. That asymmetry is worth noticing: the restrictions arrive automatically, and the privacy does not arrive at all. For comparison, our guide to the Arizona divorce process, step by step walks a different state’s version of the same sequence.

The bottom line

The real gap in Travis County is not between the law and the courthouse. It sits between filing and understanding. Three things bind both spouses from the moment the petition crosses the clerk’s counter — the standing order, the 60-day floor, the community presumption — and none of them shows up with an explanation attached. Everything else, including every order about the house, the money and the children, exists only because somebody asked for it and argued for it. People who lose ground early usually lose it in that space, obeying nothing they never learned about and waiting on relief nobody requested.

Keep reading: The Arizona Divorce Process, Step by Step · Spousal Maintenance in Arizona: Who Qualifies and How Long

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This article is general information about Texas divorce procedure and Travis County practice, not legal advice. Statutes, local rules, standing orders and filing fees change, and the facts of an individual case control how any of them apply. Reading this page does not create an attorney-client relationship. Anyone filing for or responding to a divorce in Austin or Travis County should consult a licensed Texas attorney about their own circumstances.

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