Collin County · Board Certified in Family Law
Allen Divorce Lawyer
Texas is a no-fault state, but it is not a simple one. What your divorce costs, how long it takes and what you walk away with are decided by rules that most people meet for the first time on the worst month of their life.
Divorce for Allen Families
Allen is an established Collin County suburb with high homeownership and a large share of longer marriages. For divorce purposes that matters in a specific way: a Allen case is filed in Collin County, heard by Collin County judges, and governed by Collin County's local rules and standing orders.
The courthouse is at Collin County Courthouse, 2100 Bloomdale Rd., McKinney, TX 75071. Families here are usually served by Allen ISD, which is the practical anchor for school-calendar questions in a possession schedule — exchanges, spring break, and the start and end of the summer period all key off the district calendar rather than a generic date.
Two things drive the calendar in a Allen divorce: the Collin County docket and whether the estate needs valuing. Counties differ in how quickly they set contested hearings and in how firmly they require mediation before granting a trial date. The 60-day statutory wait (Tex. Fam. Code § 6.702) is almost never the constraint.
Allen's profile — an established suburb with high homeownership and longer-than-average marriages — tends to shape the asset side more than the parenting side. Where a household's wealth sits in home equity, retirement accounts and an employer's equity plan rather than in cash, the question is rarely who gets what percentage. It is how you divide an estate without forcing a sale that costs both people money.
Filing in Collin County. Texas requires that one spouse have lived in the county of filing for the 90 days before the petition (Tex. Fam. Code § 6.301), on top of six months' residency in the state. A recent move between Collin County and a neighbouring county can reset that 90-day clock even though nothing about the marriage changed.
What Texas actually requires before you can file
Two clocks have to have run before a Texas court will hear your case. One of you must have been a domiciliary of Texas for the six months before filing, and a resident of the county you file in for the 90 days before filing (Tex. Fam. Code § 6.301). Move here in March and you cannot file in September in a county you reached in August — the state clock is satisfied and the county clock is not.
The ground for most Texas divorces is insupportability (Tex. Fam. Code § 6.001), which means the marriage has become insupportable because of discord that destroys the legitimate ends of the relationship. Nobody has to prove anybody did anything. Fault grounds still exist and still matter, mostly because fault can influence how a judge divides property — but the divorce itself does not depend on them.
Community property is a presumption, not a coin flip
Texas presumes that everything either spouse holds at the end of the marriage is community property (Tex. Fam. Code § 3.002). Separate property — what you owned before the marriage, plus anything you received during it by gift or inheritance (Tex. Fam. Code § 3.001) — stays yours, but only if you can prove the character of it. That proof is a tracing problem, and tracing is documentary. The inheritance that sat in its own account is straightforward. The inheritance that went into the joint account and paid for four years of groceries is a fight.
The court then divides the community estate in a manner it deems just and right (Tex. Fam. Code § 7.001). Just and right is not a synonym for equal. Judges consider earning capacity, fault in the breakup, who has the children, health, education and the size of each spouse's separate estate. A 50/50 split is common because it is often defensible, not because it is required.
Who Handles These Cases
Lisa G. Garza is Board Certified in Family Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization and has practiced Texas family law for more than 30 years. The firm represents Allen families from offices on the Dallas North Tollway and in McKinney, and appears in Collin County.