Online Divorce in Ontario

You can file for divorce online in Ontario. What you cannot do is complete the entire process from your laptop — some steps still require in-person elements like sworn affidavits and physical service of documents. Knowing what the online system covers and where it stops saves you from stalling at a step you assumed was digital.

The Two Filing Portals

Ontario has two mandatory online portals for family court filings, and using the wrong one gets your application rejected:

Ontario Courts Public Portal — mandatory for the Toronto region (specifically cases at 47 Sheppard Avenue East and 311 Jarvis Street). This portal handles all family court filings for Toronto.

Family Submissions Online (FSO) — the Justice Services Online platform used for every region outside Toronto, including Brampton, Mississauga, Hamilton, Ottawa, Windsor, London, and all other courthouses across the province.

Both portals accept the same forms and documents. The difference is purely geographic. Check which Superior Court of Justice location has jurisdiction over your case, and use the corresponding portal.

What You Can Do Online

Through either portal, you can:

• Submit your Form 8A: Application (Divorce) to open the court file
• Pay the $224 Stage One filing fee and the $445 Stage Two fee electronically
• Upload your sworn Form 6B: Affidavit of Service as proof that the respondent was served
• File your Form 36A: Certificate of Clerk (Divorce)
• Submit the Stage Two judgment package (Form 36, Form 25A, and supporting documents)
• File Form 36B and pay the $25 fee to request your Certificate of Divorce

When the court accepts your filing, you receive a digital notification that the document has been approved and issued with a court seal, signature, and date. No need to visit the courthouse to pick up a stamped copy.

What Still Requires In-Person Steps

Sworn affidavits. Form 36: Affidavit for Divorce and Form 6B: Affidavit of Service must be sworn or affirmed in front of a commissioner for taking affidavits. You can do this for free at the family court counter, or pay approximately $21 per document to a private notary. The sworn document is then scanned and uploaded through the portal.

Service of process. Even though you file online, Rule 6 of the Family Law Rules still requires that the respondent be served by a third party using an approved method. You cannot email your spouse a link to the portal filing. A process server or any person over 18 can hand-deliver the documents (personal service) or mail them with a Form 6 that the respondent must sign and return.

Marriage certificate. The court needs your original marriage certificate. Follow the portal and registry instructions for submitting it with your online filing.

Online Divorce Services vs. the Court Portal

When people search for "online divorce Ontario," they often find two very different things:

1. The government filing portals (FSO and the Ontario Courts Public Portal) — free to use, run by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice. These are where you actually file your documents.
2. Commercial online divorce services — companies like Simple Divorce, Untie the Knot, or CompleteCase that charge $300 to $899 to prepare your documents and, in some cases, file them on your behalf.

The commercial services are essentially document preparation tools. They ask you questions through a web form, generate the correct court forms from your answers, and sometimes handle the filing. But they still use the same government portals behind the scenes, and you still pay the same $694 in court fees on top of their service fee.

Whether a commercial service is worth the cost depends on your comfort level with filling out the forms yourself. The forms are available for free at ontariocourtforms.on.ca, and CLEO's Steps to Justice platform provides guided pathways for completing them. The gap these services fill is the same one a process-navigation guide fills — organizing the steps into a clear sequence and catching common formatting errors before you submit.

The Continuing Record in a Digital World

Even though Ontario has moved to online filing, the Continuing Record requirement under Rule 9 still applies. Every document filed in your case must be organized into a structured record with a Cumulative Table of Contents, proper tab numbering, and the correct cover sheets. For contested matters or case conferences, you may also need to upload documents into the Case Center system (by Thomson Reuters) at least 5 business days before a scheduled hearing.

The Continuing Record is the most common source of clerk rejections for self-represented filers. Digital filing did not eliminate it — it just changed the medium from a physical binder to organized PDF uploads.

UFC vs. Non-UFC Courthouses

Not every courthouse in Ontario handles divorce. The province is divided into Unified Family Court (UFC) locations and non-UFC locations:

• UFC locations (Hamilton, Barrie, London, Kingston, and 21 others): one branch of the Superior Court handles everything — divorce, property, parenting, support
• Non-UFC locations (Toronto, Brampton, and others): jurisdiction is split. Divorce and property claims must go to the Superior Court of Justice. Parenting and support-only claims can go to either the Superior Court or the Ontario Court of Justice.

The Ontario Court of Justice cannot grant a divorce or divide property, regardless of whether you file online or in person. Make sure you are filing with the correct court before you start.

The Ontario Divorce Filing Process Guide includes a portal selection checklist, the Continuing Record setup procedure, and pre-filing validation steps that match the criteria court clerks use to review online submissions.

See more Ontario guides →