South Carolina Divorce Laws: Grounds, Property, and Alimony

South Carolina divorce laws require at least one spouse to have lived in the state for a year, recognize one no-fault and four fault-based grounds, impose a three-month minimum wait before any final decree, and divide marital property equitably rather than 50-50. Alimony, custody, and child support all follow their own factor tests, and a proven case of adultery permanently bars the guilty spouse from receiving alimony.

Who Can File in South Carolina

At least one spouse must have lived in South Carolina for a minimum of one year before filing. If both spouses currently live in the state, the residency requirement drops to three months for the filing spouse.¹

You file in the county where the other spouse lives, or the county where you last lived together as a married couple. If the other spouse lives out of state or cannot be located after a reasonable search, you file in the county where you live.²

The Five Legal Grounds

South Carolina recognizes one no-fault ground and four fault grounds.³ Which one you use affects timing, alimony, and property division.

One Year of Separation

The most common route requires you and your spouse to live separate and apart without cohabitation for a continuous year. Sleeping in different bedrooms does not qualify. You must maintain separate households. Once the year is complete, either spouse can file, and neither has to prove wrongdoing.³

Adultery

You must show your spouse had both the inclination and the opportunity for an extramarital relationship. Direct evidence is not required, but circumstantial evidence has to be convincing. A finding of adultery has consequences beyond the divorce itself: the guilty spouse is barred from alimony.

Desertion

Your spouse left for at least one year and refused to return without justification.

Physical Cruelty

Actual bodily harm occurred, or your spouse’s behavior created a genuine fear of danger to your life or safety.

Habitual Drunkenness or Drug Use

A consistent pattern of substance abuse contributed to the breakdown of the marriage. The statute treats drug addiction the same as alcohol abuse.

Fault claims can move faster than the one-year separation track because there is no built-in waiting period before filing, but they require proof, often including third-party witnesses or documented evidence.

Separate Maintenance Is Not Legal Separation

South Carolina does not recognize a formal “legal separation” status. If you are not ready to divorce or cannot yet meet the one-year separation requirement, you can file for an order of separate maintenance and support. That order can address custody, child support, spousal support, who stays in the marital home, and how debts are handled while the marriage technically continues. It remains in effect until the parties reach a final agreement, go to trial, or one spouse files for and obtains a divorce.²

How Long It Takes and How It Moves

No final decree can be granted until at least three months after the complaint is filed. If you filed on the ground of desertion or one-year separation, the court can schedule the hearing and issue the decree as soon as the responsive pleading is filed or the other spouse is found in default, whichever happens first.²

In practice, no-fault cases already carry a built-in delay because the year of separation must be complete before filing. Fault cases on adultery or physical cruelty grounds are the ones most affected by the three-month floor.

You start the case by filing a Summons and Complaint with the Clerk of Court in the family court division. The filing fee for a divorce action is $150.⁴ The Judicial Branch publishes simple divorce packets for self-represented litigants, with standardized forms for the summons, complaint, service, and answer.⁵ After filing, the other spouse must be formally served, and has thirty days to answer.

Before the case can be placed on the trial docket, the parties must attempt alternative dispute resolution, and a Proof of ADR must be filed with the court.⁶ Mediation lets both spouses negotiate custody, property, and support with a neutral facilitator rather than leaving every decision to a judge.

If you need immediate relief while the divorce is pending, you can request a temporary hearing. The family court can issue orders on temporary custody, child support, spousal support, exclusive use of the marital home, or restraining orders. Temporary orders remain in effect until the final hearing and are not supposed to influence the judge’s final decision, though the status quo they create often carries weight.²

How Property Gets Divided

South Carolina uses equitable distribution, which aims for a fair split, not necessarily a 50-50 one.⁷ Marital property covers most assets acquired during the marriage regardless of whose name is on the title. Nonmarital property (things you owned before the wedding, inheritances, gifts from someone other than your spouse, and anything excluded by a valid prenuptial agreement) stays with the spouse who owns it.⁸

One wrinkle catches people off guard. If nonmarital property increased in value during the marriage because of the other spouse’s efforts, that increase can be treated as marital property subject to division.⁸

The court weighs fifteen factors when dividing assets and debts. The ones that tend to matter most are the length of the marriage, each spouse’s financial and non-financial contributions, income and earning potential, health, custody arrangements and the family home, tax consequences, retirement benefits, and existing debts. Marital misconduct that affected the couple’s finances (gambling away savings, hiding assets) can shift the balance even if fault was not used as a ground for the divorce itself.⁷

Retirement Accounts and QDROs

Retirement benefits earned during the marriage are marital property and can be divided. A South Carolina divorce decree by itself is not enough to actually collect your share from a private-sector employer plan like a 401(k) or pension. Federal law under ERISA requires a separate court order called a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, or QDRO, which the plan administrator must review and approve before any distribution.⁹

If your spouse has benefits in more than one plan, you typically need a separate QDRO for each. Skipping or delaying the QDRO is one of the most common post-divorce mistakes, because without it the plan has no legal authority to pay you anything. Military pensions follow a different process and cannot be divided using a QDRO.

Alimony and the Adultery Bar

South Carolina courts have wide discretion in awarding alimony based on one spouse’s need and the other’s ability to pay. The law recognizes four main types, each with different termination rules and different modification rights.¹⁰

Periodic alimony is an ongoing monthly payment that ends on remarriage, cohabitation, or death of either spouse, and can be modified if circumstances change significantly.
Rehabilitative alimony is a fixed amount over a set period, designed to help a spouse gain the education or training to become self-supporting. It can be modified if unforeseen circumstances derail good-faith efforts to become independent.
Lump-sum alimony is a set total paid all at once or in installments. It ends only on the recipient’s death and cannot be modified based on remarriage or changed finances.
Reimbursement alimony compensates a spouse who supported the other through education or career advancement. Like lump-sum alimony it is a fixed amount, but it ends on remarriage or cohabitation.

Judges weigh factors that overlap with the property analysis but sit apart from it: length of the marriage, health, education, employment history and earning potential, standard of living during the marriage, current and anticipated income and expenses, and each spouse’s contribution to the other’s career.²

A spouse who committed adultery before either the formal signing of a written property or settlement agreement or the entry of a permanent court order is completely barred from receiving alimony. The court has no discretion. Proven adultery within that window eliminates the claim entirely.¹⁰

Cohabitation ends most alimony types. The statute defines “continued cohabitation” as living with another person in a romantic relationship for ninety or more consecutive days. Courts can also find cohabitation exists when a recipient repeatedly moves in and out of a partner’s home in shorter stints to try to dodge the ninety-day threshold.²

Custody and Child Support

Custody decisions follow the best interests of the child, and the court weighs seventeen statutory factors.¹¹ Legal custody is the right to make major decisions about education, medical care, extracurricular activities, and religious upbringing. Physical custody determines where the child lives day to day. Either can be joint or sole.¹²

The factors that tend to carry the most weight are the child’s developmental needs, each parent’s ability to meet those needs, existing relationships with each parent and siblings, each parent’s willingness to encourage the child’s relationship with the other parent, and the stability of each proposed home. The court also considers attempts to manipulate or disparage the other parent in front of the child, any history of domestic violence or child abuse, and whether a parent relocated more than one hundred miles from the child’s primary home in the past year without a safety-related reason.¹¹ Older children who can articulate a reasonable preference will have that preference considered, weighted by age, maturity, and judgment.¹³

Child support uses the income shares model, which estimates what both parents would have spent on their children together and divides that amount in proportion to each parent’s gross income. The calculation uses gross income rather than take-home pay and covers nine categories of children’s expenses: food at home, food away from home, shelter, utilities, household goods, clothing, transportation, ordinary healthcare, and recreation. On top of the base amount, the court adds each parent’s proportional share of health insurance premiums, work-related childcare, and extraordinary medical expenses.¹⁴

If a parent is voluntarily unemployed or underemployed, the court can impute income based on what that parent could reasonably earn at full capacity.¹⁵

Federal Tax Rules a South Carolina Decree Cannot Override

For any divorce or separation agreement finalized after December 31, 2018, the person paying alimony cannot deduct those payments, and the person receiving alimony does not report them as income. This applies to all current South Carolina divorces.¹⁶

Property transfers between spouses as part of the divorce are tax-free under federal law. No gain or loss is recognized at the time of the transfer, and the receiving spouse inherits the original owner’s tax basis. If you receive the family home with a low basis and later sell it, you could face a significant capital gains tax bill even though you paid nothing for the house in the divorce. The transfer must happen within one year of the marriage ending, or be directly related to the divorce, to qualify. Transfers to a nonresident alien spouse do not qualify.¹⁷

Only one parent can claim a child as a dependent for the child tax credit in any given year. The IRS default awards the claim to the custodial parent, meaning the one the child lived with for the greater number of nights that year. A South Carolina decree that says the noncustodial parent gets to claim the child does not work with the IRS unless the custodial parent signs IRS Form 8332 releasing the claim. The noncustodial parent must attach that form to their return each year they claim the credit. Without it, the IRS will reject the claim regardless of what the court order says.¹⁸

1
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 20-3-30 – Residence Requirement
2
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 20-3 – Divorce
3
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 20-3-10 – Grounds for Divorce
4
South Carolina Judicial Branch. Family Court Filing Fees
5
South Carolina Judicial Branch. SRL Simple Divorce Packets
6
South Carolina Judicial Branch. Court Rules – ADR – Rule 5
7
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 20-3-620 – Apportionment Factors
8
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 20-3-630 – Marital Property, Nonmarital Property
9
Pension Rights Center. What You Need To Know About Dividing Retirement Benefits at Divorce
10
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 20-3-130 – Award of Alimony and Other Allowances
11
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 63-15-240 – Contents of Order
12
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 63-15-210 – Definitions
13
South Carolina Legislature. South Carolina Code 63-15 – Child Custody and Visitation
14
South Carolina Department of Social Services. South Carolina Child Support Guidelines 2024 Edition
15
Legal Information Institute. South Carolina Code of Regulations 114-4720 – Determination of Child Support Awards
16
IRS. Divorce or Separation May Have an Effect on Taxes
17
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1041 – Transfers of Property Between Spouses or Incident to Divorce
18
IRS. Form 8332 – Release/Revocation of Release of Claim to Exemption for Child by Custodial Parent