How do I file taxes while my divorce is pending?
Your filing status is decided by your marital status on December 31. Still married on the last day of the year means you file as married, whether the case has been pending for a week or two years. Divorced by that date means you file as single, or as head of household if you qualify, for the entire year.
Filing status itself is federal, so unlike most of divorce it does not change based on where you live. What goes on the return still can.
Married, but which kind
Still married on December 31 usually leaves two options, and sometimes a third.
Married filing jointly usually produces a lower combined tax bill. The catch is joint and several liability: both of you are individually responsible for the entire amount owed, including anything that turns out to be wrong. If your spouse understated income and it surfaces later, the government can pursue either of you for all of it, regardless of what your decree says about who pays taxes.
Married filing separately costs more in most cases and gives up several credits. What it buys is separation: in most states you are responsible for your own return and nobody else's. In a community property state the split is not that clean: you may still have to report half of the community income, including half of what your spouse earned, so read IRS Publication 555 before assuming a separate return separates you. There is an exception, and it describes a lot of separated couples: if you lived apart for the entire calendar year, did not file jointly, and passed none of that earned money to each other before December 31, each of you is taxed on what you actually earned. Part of a year apart does not count.
The trade is a real one, and it turns on how much you trust the accuracy of what your spouse reports. If you have any doubt, the higher tax is buying something.
And the third option people miss. If you lived apart from your spouse for the entire last six months of the year, paid more than half the cost of keeping up a home that was your child's main home for more than half the year, and can claim that child, the IRS treats you as unmarried and you may be able to file as head of household even though you are still married. Signing the dependent claim over to the other parent does not cost you this. You still count as able to claim the child for this purpose, so do not file separately for a whole year believing otherwise. That is better than married filing separately in almost every case. It is worth checking against Publication 504 before concluding you are stuck with the two obvious choices.
Who claims the children
Generally the parent the child lived with for more nights during the year claims them. Parents often agree to something different, and the way to do that properly is Form 8332, signed by the custodial parent and attached to the other parent's return every year they claim the child, not just the first one.
Three things to know. A decree saying who claims the children does not by itself override the tax rules. The IRS wants the form. If both parents claim the same child, the return filed second is typically rejected and the dispute gets resolved by tiebreaker rules rather than by whoever moved fastest; if yours is the one rejected and you believe you are entitled, file the same return on paper and let the IRS write to both of you.
And Form 8332 moves less than people assume. It transfers the dependent claim and the child tax credit. It does not transfer head of household filing status, the earned income credit, or the child and dependent care credit. Those stay with the parent the child actually lived with, whatever the form or the decree says. Price the trade accordingly, because the part that cannot be transferred is often worth more than the part that can.
If your decree alternates years, put a reminder somewhere. This is a recurring administrative task that outlives everyone's memory of the agreement.
If you signed a release covering all future years and want it back, you can revoke it on the same form. Give the other parent a copy and keep proof that you did, because the revocation does not take effect until the tax year after the year you deliver it. That means deciding a year ahead of the return it affects.
If your spouse filed jointly without your consent
Do not assume a missing signature means the return was not joint. The IRS can treat a return as jointly filed where a spouse went along with it by conduct, and e-filed returns carry no signature at all. If one was filed with your name on it and you did not agree, file your own separate return, tell the IRS in writing that you did not consent to the joint filing, and raise it promptly rather than hoping it resolves.
Two different remedies get confused here, and they solve different problems. Innocent spouse relief (Form 8857) is for being held responsible for a spouse's understatement, and the usual version of it is requested within two years of the IRS notice, a short clock, and the reason not to wait. But two years is not the end of the road, and this is where people give up too early. A third kind of relief on that same form, the equitable kind, has no two-year deadline, and it also covers tax that was reported correctly and simply never paid, which is the most common divorce situation of all. If you are past the two years, or you are looking at a joint balance you both reported and neither of you paid, file anyway. Injured spouse allocation (Form 8379) is for when a joint refund is seized to pay your spouse's separate debt, such as past-due child support or a student loan, and it gets your share back. It has its own clock: generally three years from the return's due date, or two years from when the tax was paid, whichever gives you longer. In a community property state expect to recover less, because half of a joint overpayment can go to your spouse's non-federal debts, such as state tax or back child support, no matter which of you earned the money.
Two more things
Update your withholding. A new W-4 takes minutes. Your status is changing and what should be coming out of each paycheck changes with it, which is much better handled now than discovered in April.
Alimony changed in 2019, and the old rule is still what most people repeat. For a divorce or separation instrument executed after December 31, 2018, alimony is not deductible by the payer and not taxable to the recipient. For agreements executed on or before that date, the old treatment still applies (deductible to the payer, taxable to the recipient) unless you modify the agreement and expressly adopt the new rule. If you are negotiating a number, know which regime you are in first, because the same monthly figure is worth very different amounts under each. Child support has never been deductible or taxable either way.
Where this fits
A settlement that looks even on paper often is not once tax is applied, because a dollar in a retirement account and a dollar in savings are not worth the same after tax. That is one of the clearest cases for spending money on a professional. The money side of divorce covers the wider picture.
This is general information about federal tax rules, not tax advice, and the treatment of anything in your particular settlement deserves a professional who knows the details. Some accountants and financial advisors specialize in divorce, and the tax questions are exactly where that specialization pays for itself.