Can You Get an Uncontested Divorce With Children in Virginia? A Virginia Square Guide

Virginia Square, Arlington County · Uncontested Divorce

You have agreed on almost everything, and the one thing you both care about more than any of it is not making this harder on the kids than it has to be. So you want the quiet version. The version where nobody testifies and nobody has to pick a side. Here is the answer: yes, you can get an uncontested divorce in Virginia with minor children, but two things change. The six month separation option is not available to you, so a full year applies, and a judge will still review your parenting plan and your child support figure rather than simply approving whatever you signed. In Virginia Square, most of the parents I work with get there. It just takes knowing what a court will and will not accept.

By Corrie Sirkin, Esq. · Founding Partner, NOVA Legal Professionals

This article is one part of our larger guide to divorce in Virginia. For the full picture, start with our cornerstone, Divorce in Virginia. Here, I will focus on agreed divorces where children are involved.

The clock is different when there are children

This is the first thing to absorb, because it reshapes your timeline.

Virginia’s shorter six month separation period is available only to couples with no minor children of the marriage who have signed a property settlement agreement. If you have minor children together, you need a full year of living separate and apart, without cohabitation and without interruption, no matter how completely you agree on everything.

Being agreed does not shorten the year. What it does is make the year productive. Most parents use it to put the arrangement in writing, live under the schedule, and find out what actually works before it becomes permanent. A separation agreement signed early can govern that whole period, and the parts that work well can carry straight into the final document.

Honestly, I think the year helps in these cases. A parenting schedule that has survived a school year, a holiday season, and a summer is a much better schedule than one drafted at a kitchen table in February.

What your parenting plan actually needs to cover

Vague plans cause conflict later. Specific plans prevent it. Here is what a workable agreement addresses.

1. Legal custody, meaning who makes major decisions about education, healthcare, and religious upbringing, and whether that is shared or held by one parent.
2. Physical custody and the regular schedule, written with actual days and times rather than reasonable and liberal language.
3. Holidays, school breaks, and summer, including how they override the regular schedule and how years alternate.
4. Exchanges, covering where, when, and who provides transportation.
5. Communication, including how parents reach each other, how a child contacts the other parent, and how you handle schedule changes.
6. Travel and relocation, including notice requirements and passports.
7. How you resolve disagreements, such as agreeing to mediate before either of you files anything.

The word reasonable is the one I remove most often. Two people who agreed that visitation would be reasonable will discover, usually within a year, that they define it very differently, and there is nothing for a court to enforce.

A judge still reviews child support

Parents are sometimes surprised that they cannot simply agree on a support number and be done.

Virginia has statutory child support guidelines, and the guideline amount is presumed to be correct. A court reviews the figure even in an agreed case. If the two of you propose something different from the guideline, the court needs written findings explaining why the deviation is justified and consistent with the child’s best interests.

Deviations do happen and they are legitimate. Extraordinary medical needs, private school tuition, unusual travel costs in a long distance arrangement, and a shared custody schedule can all support one. What does not work is a parent agreeing to little or no support as a trade for something else, because the support belongs to the child rather than to the parent bargaining it away.

The calculation itself is driven by both parents’ gross incomes, the number of children, the custody arrangement, work related childcare, and health insurance premiums for the children. Bring real numbers to that conversation and the figure usually settles itself.

What a court is looking for

Virginia decides custody and visitation on the best interests of the child, weighing a list of statutory factors. In an agreed case a judge is not retrying your family, but they are checking that the plan is coherent and that it serves the children.

Among the things the statute directs a court to consider are the age and condition of the child and each parent, the existing relationship between each parent and the child, the child’s needs and important relationships, each parent’s role in upbringing and their future ability to fill it, each parent’s willingness to support the child’s relationship with the other parent, the ability of the parents to cooperate and resolve disputes, the child’s own preference where the child is of reasonable intelligence and maturity, and any history of family abuse.

That willingness factor deserves attention from both parents. A plan that reads as though one parent is being managed out of the child’s life will attract scrutiny even in an agreed case.

What turns an agreed case with children contested

I would rather you see these coming.

The trigger	Why it breaks the agreement	What prevents it
A vague schedule	Two readings of the same clause become a standing argument	Write actual days, times, and exchange locations
A support number with no math behind it	The court asks for a justification nobody prepared	Run the guideline calculation first, then decide about deviating
An unaddressed relocation	One parent gets a job offer and the plan has nothing to say about it	Include notice requirements and a process up front
A new partner introduced early	Trust collapses and the cooperative posture goes with it	Agree on how and when introductions happen
Holiday language that only covers this year	The first December after the decree becomes a dispute	Write an alternating pattern that runs indefinitely

If one of these does surface and you cannot resolve it, that is not a catastrophe. It means the case moves to a contested track on that issue while the rest stays agreed. Partial agreement still saves you a great deal.

How Virginia law treats it

Virginia grants a no fault divorce after one year of living separate and apart without cohabitation and without interruption, and the shorter six month period is available only where there are no minor children of the marriage and the parties have signed a property settlement agreement. Custody and visitation are determined according to the best interests of the child under a list of statutory factors, and the court retains authority to revisit custody and support upon a material change in circumstances. Child support is set by statutory guidelines, the guideline amount is presumed correct, and any deviation requires written findings. The court may affirm, ratify, and incorporate the parties’ written agreement into the decree. A Virginia Square case is heard in the Arlington County Circuit Court.

How we help in Virginia Square

We handle agreed divorces involving children for families across Virginia Square, Ballston, and Clarendon. Most of these parents arrive already cooperating, and our job is to protect that rather than disturb it. We turn what you have worked out into a parenting plan specific enough to be enforceable, run the actual guideline support calculation so the number has support behind it, and move the uncontested process through the court without generating conflict that was never there.

We also raise the things parents have not thought about yet, because those are what bring people back two years later. Holiday rotation beyond the first year, how to handle a relocation, when a child gets a say in the schedule. All of that belongs in your property settlement agreement, and putting it there now is far easier than negotiating it after trust has thinned. If it turns out you are further apart than you thought, we will tell you plainly and help you narrow the gap rather than pretend the case is uncontested when it is not. You can read more about the areas we serve on our Virginia Square family law page and our Arlington County overview.

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