The venue rule, the forms, the fees and the deadlines at the Berkeley County Family Court in Moncks Corner.
Where a Berkeley County divorce is filed, what goes in the first filing, what it costs and how soon it can be heard — the local mechanics for Goose Creek, Moncks Corner, Hanahan and Daniel Island, from the family-law attorneys at Hall & Means in Charleston.
A Berkeley County divorce is filed with the Clerk of Court at the Berkeley County Courthouse, 300-B California Avenue in Moncks Corner. Berkeley County’s Family Court sits in South Carolina’s 9th Judicial Circuit. Which county hears your case is set by S.C. Code § 20-3-60 — not by where your attorney’s office sits. Hall & Means represents Berkeley County clients from Charleston.
You file with the Clerk of Court at the Berkeley County Courthouse in Moncks Corner. The address is 300-B California Avenue, and the “-B” matters: plain 300 California Avenue is the Hill-Finklea Detention Center. The Clerk’s office opens at 9:00 a.m., half an hour later than the Charleston and Dorchester clerks. Berkeley County is paired with Charleston County in the 9th Judicial Circuit; Dorchester County is in the 1st.
| Berkeley County Family Court | Detail |
|---|---|
| Courthouse | 300-B California Avenue, Moncks Corner, SC 29461 |
| Mailing address | PO Box 219, Moncks Corner, SC 29461 |
| Family Court phone | (843) 719-4500 |
| Clerk’s office hours | 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Monday–Friday |
| Judicial circuit | 9th (with Charleston County) |
| Clerk of Court page | berkeleycountysc.gov/dept/coc/ |
| Family case records | South Carolina Judicial Branch Family Court Case Management System — portal.fccms.sccourts.org |
Read on Berkeley County’s Clerk of Court page, August 25, 2026. Hall & Means concentrates in family law, and represents divorce clients across Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties from our West Ashley office in Charleston.
Goose Creek, Moncks Corner and Hanahan sit entirely inside Berkeley County, so their residents are Berkeley County residents for venue. Ladson is a census-designated place spanning Berkeley and Charleston counties only; the Dorchester County it is widely said to reach is an artifact of the Postal Service’s “Ladson, SC” mailing area, not a boundary. A ZIP code is never a venue fact. Daniel Island is the reverse trap: part of the City of Charleston, but in Berkeley County.
| Where you live | County or counties |
|---|---|
| Goose Creek | Berkeley only |
| Moncks Corner | Berkeley only |
| Hanahan | Berkeley only |
| Daniel Island | Berkeley only (though it is City of Charleston) |
| Ladson | Berkeley + Charleston (not Dorchester) |
| Summerville | Dorchester + Berkeley + Charleston |
| North Charleston | Charleston + Dorchester + Berkeley |
Those boundaries come from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 place-to-county file, August 25, 2026. If your address sits in a split city, resolve the county at the address level before filing — the U.S. Census Geocoder at geocoding.geo.census.gov/geocoder/ does it for any address, and the Berkeley County GIS map confirms a Berkeley parcel. A home inside the Goose Creek or Moncks Corner city limits is in Berkeley County; a Summerville, Ladson or North Charleston address is the one to check.
Venue in a South Carolina divorce is set by S.C. Code § 20-3-60. Because Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties adjoin, its prongs (a) and (c) routinely point at different counties once a couple separates:
“Actions for divorce from the bonds of matrimony or for separate support and maintenance must be tried in the county (a) in which the defendant resides at the time of the commencement of the action, (b) in which the plaintiff resides if the defendant is a nonresident or after due diligence cannot be found, or (c) in which the parties last resided together as husband and wife unless the plaintiff is a nonresident, in which case it must be brought in the county in which the defendant resides.”
A spouse who moves from Hanahan to Mount Pleasant has changed counties; the county where the parties last lived together has not.
Venue is also not residency. Whether you may file in South Carolina at all is § 20-3-30: the plaintiff must have resided in the state a year, or three months if both spouses are South Carolina residents when the action is commenced. Where you married is irrelevant. Which county then hears the case is the separate § 20-3-60 question, and hiring a Charleston attorney decides neither.
A South Carolina divorce starts with a Summons and Complaint filed with the Clerk of Court, on paper. There is no Family Court e-filing anywhere in South Carolina. The e-filing system is a Court of Common Pleas program and excludes self-represented filers outright, so every Berkeley County divorce is filed on paper with the Clerk of Court.
| Document | Form | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Summons for Divorce | SCCA 400.01 SRL-DIV | Opens the action |
| Complaint for Divorce | SCCA 400.02 SRL-DIV | States the ground and the relief requested |
| Family Court Coversheet | SCCA 467 (Rev. 11/2024) | Required for docketing; a copy must be served on the defendant with the Summons and Complaint. Divorce is nature-of-action code 110 |
| Financial Declaration | SCCA 430 (Rev. 11/2024) | Required by SCRFC 20 where finances are at issue. Not filed to open the case: SCRFC 20(b) makes it due at or before the first hearing, or within 45 days of service, whichever is first |
| Certificate of Exemption | SCRFCMFORM02 | Only if one of its four grounds applies — total agreement on every issue, a contempt action, a DSS-initiated case, or issues already through a conforming ADR conference |
The Summons, Complaint and Coversheet open the case; the rest attach on their own schedules. SCRCP 12(a) gives the defendant 30 days after service to answer. Service options include the sheriff, a private process server, or your spouse’s signed Acceptance of Service (SCCA 400.03 SRL-DIV). Our guide to how a Lowcountry divorce gets filed walks the same sequence in Charleston County.
The filing fee for a divorce in South Carolina Family Court is $150 — the same in Berkeley County as everywhere else in the state. It is a two-statute stack: § 8-21-310(C)(1) sets $100 and § 14-1-204(B)(1) adds $50.
| Court cost | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Divorce filing fee | $150 | Family Court fee schedule; § 8-21-310(C)(1) + § 14-1-204(B)(1) |
| Defendant’s answer | No fee | § 8-21-310(D) |
| Motion fee | $25 | § 8-21-320 |
| Motion for temporary relief (Rule 21) | $25 — one fee however many forms of relief it requests | Judicial Branch Motion Fee List |
| Rule to show cause — child support or spousal support | No fee | Judicial Branch Motion Fee List |
| Rule to show cause — court-ordered custody or visitation | $25 | Judicial Branch Motion Fee List |
| Sheriff’s service of a Summons and Complaint | $15 initial service, $5 per attempt after, $25 maximum | § 23-19-10(d), statewide |
The court-fee figures above were read on the South Carolina Judicial Branch’s Family Court fee schedule, sccourts.org/courts/trial-courts/family-court/court-fees/, and its Motion Fee List, sccourts.org/media/ctldbmow/motionfeelist2016.pdf; the sheriff’s-service figures come from S.C. Code § 23-19-10(d) at scstatehouse.gov/code/t23c019.php. All retrieved August 25, 2026; confirm before you pay. At the counter, bring cash, a cashier’s check or a money order — the Judicial Branch’s own divorce packet tells filers not to bring a personal check.
If the fee is the obstacle, there are two routes. Under SCRCP 3(b)(1) you may move to proceed in forma pauperis on forms SCCA 405 and SCCA 405.1; a presumption of inability to pay arises where net household income is at or below the federal poverty guidelines. Under SCRCP 3(b)(2), fees are waived without a motion where a legal aid, nonprofit or South Carolina Bar Pro Bono Program attorney certifies representation in writing. Those are court costs. At Hall & Means an initial retainer is quoted at your consultation, based on the facts of your case.
Yes. The Judicial Branch publishes a free self-represented divorce packet, SCCA 400P SRL-DIV — 12 pages of instructions and 18 forms. It is written for filers who meet its eligibility conditions: the ground is one year’s continuous separation without cohabitation; there is no marital property or debt, or an agreement on how to divide it; and there are no children and none expected, or minor children with an agreement on custody, visitation and child support meeting the South Carolina Child Support Guidelines.
The packet is not closed to parents, and not to couples who own a house. That claim is common and wrong. The disqualifier is disagreement: the instructions say that if you have been living in separate dwellings for less than one year, or cannot agree about minor children, marital property and marital debt, obtaining a divorce on your own is not recommended. Fault grounds are out too — the packet covers the one-year separation ground only, so if you are weighing South Carolina’s other grounds for divorce, it is the wrong instrument.
Two points most summaries skip. Make two copies of the entire packet and take the originals and copies to the Clerk of Court. And line up a corroborating witness — the court expects someone with personal knowledge that you have lived separate and apart for one year to testify at your hearing, and advises asking a second person in case of last-minute problems. South Carolina Legal Services publishes a free interactive version at lawhelp.org/sc; the Bar’s Lawyer Referral Service is 1-800-868-2284.
The floor is statutory, not local. § 20-3-80 bars a reference before two months after the complaint is filed and a final decree before three months after filing. The statute carves out its own exception: where the plaintiff seeks a divorce on the grounds of desertion or separation for one year, the hearing may be held and the decree issued after the responsive pleadings have been filed or after the respondent has been adjudged in default, whichever occurs sooner. The three-month bar therefore binds adultery, physical cruelty and habitual drunkenness — and the statute says “three months,” not “90 days.”
| Interval | Published figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Filing to reference | Not before 2 months | § 20-3-80 |
| Filing to final decree | Not before 3 months (waived for desertion or one-year separation) | § 20-3-80 |
| Temporary-hearing request to hearing | 21 to 45 days | SCRFC 21(c) |
| Notice of a temporary hearing | Served at least 20 days before | SCRFC 21(d) |
| Return to a temporary motion | No later than 10 days before | SCRFC 21(e) |
| Written evidence for a temporary hearing | Served and filed no later than 5 days before | SCRFC 21(f)(2) |
| Mediator appointed to first conference | Within 30 days | ADR Rule 4(d)(4) |
| Hearing to written order | No later than 30 days | SCRFC 26(c) |
| Filing to a contested final hearing | No published figure | — |
Temporary relief runs on SCRFC Rule 21 as amended by order dated April 29, 2025, effective October 1, 2025, and it front-loads everything: evidence at a temporary hearing is confined to affidavits, financial declarations and statutorily required documents such as a parenting plan. Mediation then gates the merits hearing — where issues are subject to mediation, ADR Rule 4(d)(2)(A) says the court shall not schedule a hearing on the merits until a Proof of ADR has been filed.
What nobody publishes is a median. Neither the Judicial Branch nor the Berkeley County Clerk of Court publishes an average time from filing to a contested final hearing, so any number you are quoted for how long a Berkeley County divorce takes is an estimate, not a statistic.
No. South Carolina has no Family Court e-filing, so every divorce in the state is filed on paper. The statewide e-filing system covers the Court of Common Pleas only, and excludes self-represented parties. The state’s self-represented packet tells filers to take the originals and two copies to the Clerk of Court.
Not necessarily — Daniel Island is in Berkeley County, though it is part of the City of Charleston. Venue under S.C. Code § 20-3-60 keys to a county, not a city name or a ZIP code. Where the case is heard depends on where both spouses live and where you last lived together.
Usually, yes. South Carolina’s ADR rules apply in all counties, and Rule 3(a) subjects contested issues in domestic relations actions to court-ordered mediation unless the case falls under Rule 3(b), which exempts nine categories including requests for temporary relief. Rule 3(c) allows a good-cause exemption on motion.
A default does not end your spouse’s participation. SCRFC 17(a) requires notice of the merits hearing to a defendant who filed no answer, and that defendant may be heard on custody, visitation, alimony, support, equitable distribution and counsel fees. The answer deadline is 30 days after service under SCRCP 12(a).
Request a confidential consultation. Procedural mistakes early in a divorce affect venue, filing, service and temporary-hearing preparation — a case opened in the wrong county, or a temporary hearing built on paper that arrived after the five-day deadline. If you live in Goose Creek, Moncks Corner, Hanahan or anywhere else in Berkeley County and want to talk it through confidentially and without obligation, call Hall & Means at (843) 377-1341 or send a confidential message. We work with clients across Charleston, Berkeley and Dorchester counties from 1816 Belgrade Avenue, Ste. 101, Charleston, SC 29407.
Last reviewed: August 25, 2026.
This page is general legal information, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. South Carolina law changes and every case turns on its specific facts. Consult a licensed South Carolina family-law attorney about your situation.
Get in touch
Submit the form and we'll reply within one business day — by email or phone, whichever you prefer. Everything you share is protected by attorney-client privilege from the first message.
Phone
Office
1816 Belgrade Avenue, Ste. 101
Charleston, SC 29407
Hours
Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
