Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

Given your situation, if I were you, I would file a motion with the Court for a change of venue based upon your residency in Yakima County and lay out the facts of your disability and the difficulty you would have traveling to King County.

That said, even if you are not able to get venue moved, you are not likely to have too many hearings where your presence in person is required. Usually, the hearings that need to take place with a dissolution involving children are a hearing to set temporary orders for child support, spousal maintenance, custody orders, and temporary financial orders dealing with things like who is responsible for car payments or home payments or health insurance, etc.

From there, unless anyone violates the terms of the temporary orders, you will probably not have to attend future hearings unless we go to trial, in which case you would need to attend that. In the meantime, the parties negotiate to hopefully reach a settlement. As soon as one is reached, then at least one party needs to appear in court to enter the final orders.

Thus, as hard as it may seem, you may be able to keep this down to two trips. That said, if the litigation gets particularly ugly, we could easily be in court several times over the court of the dissolution winding its way through court. Thus, you make the above mentioned motion for a change of venue. In your case, I think you have a good shot at winning if your soon to be ex has moved out of State and so I am not sure why King County courts need to be involved in a dissolution of marriage between a Yakima resident and an out of state party.

If you would like local representation in King County to at least try and get the venue shifted, and enter a response to the petition to avoid a default, contact me and we can work something out. My contact information is available by clicking on my name below.