By Jason Kohlmeyer, Family Law Attorney
If your spouse is stalling your Minnesota divorce, you can still move the case forward without their cooperation. Minnesota is a no-fault state, so one spouse cannot block the divorce by refusing to participate. When delay tactics show up, the law gives you tools to answer each one: default proceedings, alternate service, motions to compel, and court orders that make the stalling spouse pay your attorney fees. This article walks through the tactics I see most often and what I do about each.
No. Your spouse cannot stop the divorce. Under Minnesota Statutes section 518.06, a court grants a dissolution when one spouse states the marriage is irretrievably broken. The other spouse does not have to agree. They cannot veto the divorce by ignoring it.
What a spouse can do is slow things down. In 26 years practicing family law, I have seen the same handful of delay tactics over and over. The good news is that each one has a clear answer. Stalling usually costs the staller more than it costs you.
Some spouses simply go quiet. They ignore the petition, skip phone calls, and refuse to discuss a settlement. This feels like a wall. It is not.
Once your spouse is properly served and the response deadline passes, you can ask the court to proceed by default. A default lets the court divide property, set support, and decide custody without the absent spouse’s input. In practice, the spouse who ignores the case forfeits their chance to argue for what they want. I have closed many cases where the silent party simply got the result the court found reasonable on the record I built.
So refusing to engage rarely helps the staller. It usually hands the other side a cleaner path.
Another common tactic is to negotiate in circles. The spouse agrees to terms, then reopens them. New demands appear every few weeks. The goal is to exhaust you into a bad deal.
I counter this by setting deadlines and moving toward trial. You are not required to negotiate forever. Once it is clear the other side is bargaining in bad faith, I ask the court to set a scheduling order with firm dates. A trial date focuses everyone. Many spouses who stall in negotiation become reasonable once a judge controls the calendar.
Bad-faith negotiation can also support a later request for attorney fees, which I cover below.
Minnesota requires that the other spouse be served with the divorce papers. Some spouses try to hide from the process server to delay the start of the case.
Hiding does not work for long. After a documented, good-faith effort at personal service fails, I ask the court for permission to serve by alternate means, including service by publication. Rule 4 of the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure governs this. The summons runs in a qualified newspaper once a week for three weeks. After that, the case proceeds even though your spouse never accepted the papers in person.
One caution specific to dissolution. If your spouse is served only by publication and never gets actual notice, they generally cannot reopen the judgment after it is entered. That cuts in your favor when someone deliberately hides.
This is the delay tactic that does the most damage in farm and business divorces. The spouse who controls the books slow-walks discovery. Bank statements arrive late or not at all. Account values stay vague. You cannot settle what you cannot see.
The answer is a motion to compel. Under Rule 37 of the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure, when a party ignores proper discovery requests, I can ask the court to order them to produce the records. The rule also lets the court award the reasonable expenses, including attorney fees, caused by the failure. So the spouse who hides documents can end up paying for the motion that forces them out.
If a spouse destroys records they were required to keep, Rule 37 also allows the court to presume those records would have hurt them. In a business valuation fight, that presumption is powerful.
Some spouses bury the case in paper. They file repetitive motions, raise meritless arguments, and force you to respond again and again. Each filing buys delay and runs up your costs.
Minnesota has a direct remedy. Minnesota Statutes section 549.211 lets the court sanction filings made to harass, to cause delay, or without any basis in law or fact. The statute includes a 21-day safe harbor. I serve the sanctions motion first, and if the offending filing is not withdrawn within 21 days, I file it with the court. Sanctions can include paying your attorney fees for the wasted work.
Used carefully, the threat of sanctions changes behavior. Most attorneys advise their clients to stop once a credible 549.211 motion is on the table.
Yes, and this is the remedy people underestimate. Minnesota Statutes section 518.14 allows two kinds of fee awards in a divorce. Need-based fees turn on whether one spouse lacks the resources to litigate. Conduct-based fees do not depend on need at all.
Conduct-based fees target exactly the behavior in this article. The court can order fees against a spouse who unreasonably adds to the length or cost of the case. Refusing discovery, ignoring orders, and reopening settled issues all qualify. I document the stalling as it happens, because a clean record of wasted time and money is what supports the award.
That documentation is the throughline. Every counter above works better when you have built a paper trail the judge can see.
Local practice matters here. In the Fifth Judicial District, which includes Blue Earth County and Mankato, and in the Third Judicial District covering Olmsted County and Rochester, the family courts move cases through an early case management process and set scheduling deadlines fairly soon after filing. A spouse who wants to stall still has to answer to those court-ordered dates.
That is the practical reason stalling fails in our region. Once a judge owns the timeline, a foot-dragging spouse cannot just wait you out. I use that structure to keep pressure on the other side rather than letting the case drift.
A stalling spouse can make your divorce slower and more expensive. They cannot stop it. Minnesota law answers every common delay tactic, from default proceedings and alternate service to motions to compel, sanctions, and fee awards. The key is to act, document, and let the court’s calendar do the work. If your spouse is dragging things out, you have more leverage than it feels like you do.
About the author: Jason Kohlmeyer is a Minnesota family law attorney with over 25 years of experience and a partner at Kohlmeyer Hagen Law Office in Mankato and Rochester. He has practiced family law exclusively since 2010 and has handled hundreds of Family Law cases across southern Minnesota. He is the author of The Divorce Survival Guide: Getting Divorced in Minnesota and has spoken on family law topics for the American Bar Association, Minn. State Bar associations and American Trial Lawyers Association. He is a member of the Minnesota State Bar Association and has been recognized by Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers of America for many years.
