Legal Question in Family Law in North Carolina

No no no.

If you have been a resident of NC for 6 months AND you have been living separate and apart from your husband for one year or more, then you can file for divorce in NC in the county where you live. Why would you go to another state to file?

However, you must serve the divorce complaint on your husband and you will have to serve him at his address, wherever that is. It does not do to serve him at some address you found on the internet. Find out where he is located - there are people finder services that are relatively inexpensive. There are missing heir/people find services which may be more expensive. Failing that, hire a private detective. You can obtain permission from the court but you have to try other means of service first. If you are still having problems, perhaps Legal Aid can help you. There are also lawyers who provide limited legal services or even pro bono (for free) legal services. See if one can help you get your husband properly served.

If you meet the requirements, you can file your divorce complaint in ANY county in North Carolina. Of course if the matter becomes contested the proper venue would be the county you reside in or the county / state the defendant resides in.

You do need to make a diligent effort to locate your spouse but that effort does NOT need to go so far as hiring private investigators. If you have made a diligent effort to locate your spouse and you can not locate your spouse you can serve your spouse by doing a legal publication in an approved newspaper. You do NOT need permission from the court to do this. However, serving by publication has a lot of legal requirements that must be met.

Unless you are indigent and eligible to request that the court waive court cost, you are most likely going to end up spending more than it would have cost for you to sit back relax and have a licensed attorney do all the work for you. These kind of questions are why you should not do your own divorce if you don't know what you're doing.