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Quick or Special Divorce for Foreigners

The Quick or Special Divorce for Foreigners is a mutual consent divorce that is exclusively available for foreigners and is pronounced and published before Dominican Courts in a short term of only 7 days.

A Quick Divorce is characterized by its transparency since the only grounds for the divorce is the mutual consent of the spouses and its principle condition is that only one of the spouses must be present at the court hearing while the absent spouse is represented by a notarized power of attorney.

Once the divorce judgment is pronounced, you will receive your Divorce Certificate and Judgment legalized by Dominican Authorities. If the document will be utilized or presented outside of the Dominican Republic, the document will be legalized by the Office of the Attorney General of the Dominican Republic, Ministry of Foreign Relations and by the corresponding Consulate where the document will be presented in order for the document to have validity abroad.

Divorce by Mutual Consent

A divorce by mutual consent is an uncontested divorce action. Both parties agree to all terms and conditions of the dissolution of the marriage prior to filing.

Jurisdiction
This divorce procedure applies to:

• Dominican citizens, whether residing in Dominican territory or not.
  
  
• Foreigners residing in the Dominican Republic who do not opt for the quick divorce procedure.
  
  
• Foreigner married to a Dominican citizen, residing in the Dominican Republic or not.

For a mutual consent divorce to be granted, the couple must have been married for more than 2, but less than 30 years. Under Dominican law, the husband must be under 60 years of age and the wife under age 50.

Procedure

If the spouses reside or travel to the Dominican Republic, they must sign a Writ of Covenants and Provisions before a Notary Public. If you do not have the document Pellerano & Herrera will draft the document for you. This document describes the agreement between the parties with respect to the division of common property, custody of the minor children within the marriage and the amount and manner of any child support payments.

Dominican citizens living abroad and foreign citizens married to Dominicans do not need to travel to the country to sign this agreement. We will send you a power of attorney which must be signed and legalized before the Consul in the nearest Dominican Consulate.

Once the divorce judgment is pronounced, you will receive your Divorce Certificate and Judgment legalized by Dominican Authorities. If the document will be utilized or presented outside of the Dominican Republic, the document will be legalized by the Office of the Attorney General of the Dominican Republic, Ministry of Foreign Relations and by the corresponding Consulate where the document will be presented in order for the document to have validity abroad.


Divorce for Specific Reason

Irreconcilable differences, is one of the main causes for a divorce for specific reason under Law 1306-Bis. The main reason for this type of divorce is the unhappiness and social disturbance caused by the incompatible characters between the spouses or the unknown domicile of either spouse. For this divorce procedure, one of the spouses must have Dominican nationality and if the spouses are foreigners, they must have married in the Dominican Republic.

Jurisdiction
In this contested divorce action, jurisdiction is determined by the domicile of the defendant spouse. If the defendant’s domicile is unknown, or if the defendant is located abroad, the court empowered to handle the case is the court of the domicile of the plaintiff. If neither one of the spouses is domiciled in the Dominican Republic, Dominican courts will not exercise jurisdiction over the matter.

Procedure
Once jurisdiction is established, a bailiff’s summons is served on the defendant spouse. This summons, requesting the presence of the spouse at an initial hearing, includes a list of witnesses the court will hear in support of the plaintiff’s demand. In most cases, only one of the spouses, usually the plaintiff is required to appear in court on the day of the hearing.