STATE OF HAWAII FAMILY LAW

Residency Requirements and Grounds for Divorce

Either you or your spouse must be a resident of Hawaii for at least six months prior to filing a complaint for a divorce. The legal divorce process begins when one spouse files a petition for divorce in the Hawaii Family Court and usually takes several months. If the couple disagrees on any of the issues the case will take longer. 

In Hawaii you can get a divorce even if your spouse does not want a divorce; you do not have to state a reason for wanting a divorce. You can get divorced in Hawaii even if you were married in another state or another country.  If you are an alien on conditional status and married to a United States citizen or a lawful permanent resident, a divorce may affect you immigration status. 

If you have been served with a Complaint for Divorce, you should file an “Answer,” especially if you don’t agree with what your spouse is saying in the Complaint. An Answer is your way to tell the judge what you want from the divorce. If you do not do an Answer, the judge could give your spouse everything s/he asked for in the Complaint. That is called a “default judgment.” In Hawai‘i, your Answer is due at the court within 20 days after you were served with the Complaint.

Dividing the Property

Hawaii is an “Equitable Distribution”  state, all  assets and debts acquired during your marriage - called "marital property" - will be divided "equitably" when you divorce unless agreed to otherwise by the divorcing spouses. Equitable is defined as “what is fair, not necessarily equal.  It is a wrong assumption to believe that marital property would be divided 50-50.

Separate property is retained by the owning spouse. Separate property includes the following:

• Assets you had before you married if you kept that property separated from property acquired during the marriage
• The income produced by a separate property investment as long as it hasn't been "commingled" - mixed together with marital property
• Property you inherit from your family during your marriage if it was willed exclusively to you and you did not commingle it with marital property during the marriage

Alimony

A court can order alimony, also known as support and maintenance, to either party in Hawaii. Support and maintenance may be ordered for an indefinite period or for a specific duration to allow a spouse to get adequate training, education or skills in order to qualify for a new occupation, update existing qualifications or enhance the spouse's employability. 

A court may modify support and maintenance if there is a material change in the physical or financial circumstances of either party

Child Custody and Visitation

In Hawaii, the court will award child custody to either parent or to both parents according to the best interest of the child. Custody may be awarded to persons other than the father or mother if that award would serve the best interest of the child. If a child is capable of forming an intelligent preference, a court will consider the wishes of the child in the custody determination. A custody award may be modified or changed whenever the best interests of the child require or justify the modification or change.

Child Support

In Hawaii, child support is based on guidelines. The guidelines include consideration for the following:

• All earnings, income and resources of both parents
• Earning potential, reasonable necessities and borrowing capacity of both parents
• Needs of the child for whom support is sought
• Existence of other dependents of the parent that will be paying child support
• Thirty hours of weekly earnings at the minimum wage imputed to parent's income where parent with school age child or children, who is able to work, remains at home and does not work.

  A support order may be modified if the relative financial condition between the parent paying child support and the parent receiving child support has substantially changed. 
  
  If the non custodial parent does not voluntarily pay the child support according to the child support order, then the custodial parent may enlist the services of the Hawaii Child Enforcement Agency to collect child support payments.