Can You Use AI to Handle Your Own Divorce?

Can You Use AI to Handle Your Own Divorce?

You can lean on AI to understand your divorce, but the moment you let it write your court filings, you’re playing with fire. On October 2, 2026, the Nebraska Supreme Court threw out a self-represented man’s appeal in a divorce case because the cases his brief cited were fake, invented by the AI tool he used to write it, as Nebraska Public Media reported. It wasn’t a one-off. This is becoming a nationwide problem that our courts are navigating.

Here’s what actually goes wrong when people hand their divorce paperwork to a chatbot, and how to use these tools without blowing up your own case.

What is an AI “hallucination”?

It’s when an AI tool makes something up and states it with total confidence. In a legal filing, that usually means fake case names, fake quotes, and statements of law that aren’t the law.

These tools are built to produce fluent, convincing text, not to tell you whether a case is real. They can’t verify their own citations, and they don’t know the law the way a licensed lawyer does. Used to draft a birthday toast, a made-up detail is harmless. Used to draft a motion, it’s the kind of error that sinks the whole document.

What are courts actually doing about it?

They’re striking the filings, and sometimes punishing the person who filed them.

In the Nebraska case, the court held a self-represented person to the same standard as a practicing attorney: file fake authority and you’ve abused the process, whether a lawyer signed it or you did. The judges warned that the next person who tries this could lose without the court reading the record at all. Earlier in 2026, the Arizona Court of Appeals said citing fake AI-generated cases can draw sanctions no matter whether you meant any harm, as the Arizona Mirror reported. A California appeals court flagged the same problem in a parent’s child-support appeal. A federal court in Oregon went further, tossing a self-represented litigant’s case after fabricated quotes turned up, with a sanction north of $15,000. One widely cited tracker of AI-error cases counted hundreds of U.S. filings in just the first half of this year.

Why does this keep catching smart people?

Because a chatbot sounds exactly like a confident lawyer, and confidence is easy to trust when you’re stressed and the fees are piling up.

Say a physician in a bruising custody fight decides to handle his own appeal to save money. He asks a chatbot for cases that support his position, and it hands him five, each with a name, a court, and a tidy quote. They read perfectly. Four of them don’t exist. He files the brief, feels good about it, and opposing counsel needs about an afternoon to find out most of his authority is fiction. Now the fight isn’t about his kids anymore. It’s about whether anything he says can be trusted.

Does the answer change by state?

Each state is dealing with this issue similarly, but there are differences.

No court anywhere rewards a filing built on invented cases. What shifts from state to state, and even from judge to judge, is what happens next: some strike the document and let you refile, some order you to pay the other side’s attorney fees, some dismiss the case outright, and some report a lawyer for discipline. The steps for correcting a bad filing vary too. And one thing holds true everywhere: an AI tool isn’t a lawyer and can’t give you legal advice. If you’re representing yourself, the safe move is to have someone licensed in your state read anything before it reaches the court.

What this means for you

If you’re tempted to run your own divorce with an AI assistant to save on fees, use it for the right job and never the wrong one.

The right job is understanding. These tools are genuinely good at explaining what a term means, turning a wall of legalese into plain English, helping you organize your documents, and drafting the questions you want to ask a real lawyer. The wrong job is anything that goes to the court with your name on it. Don’t let AI generate your filings, your citations, or your legal arguments, and if you’ve already used it for a draft, treat every case and every rule it gave you as unverified until a human confirms it.

The damage isn’t just a stricken brief. It’s the credibility hit. The part people underrate is how far that hit travels. Once a judge catches you citing cases that don’t exist, every other thing you say gets read with a raised eyebrow, and in a custody or support fight that read-through is the whole game.

Straight Answers

Can I use ChatGPT or another AI tool to write my divorce paperwork? You can use it to understand the process and draft questions, but don’t file anything it wrote without a lawyer checking it first. The tools invent fake cases and misstate the law, and courts are striking those filings and sometimes penalizing the person who filed them. Another important consideration is whether your chats with AI are privileged and confidential or discoverable by the other side. Usually, there is no privilege, but that is for another article.

Will a judge know I used AI? Often, yes. Opposing counsel and court staff check citations, and a fake case is easy to spot once someone looks. Several courts have caught self-represented filers and lawyers alike this year.

Is it against the rules to use AI at all in my case? Using AI to learn or organize isn’t the problem. Filing documents with fabricated cases or made-up law is, and that’s true whether a lawyer or a self-represented person signs it. Some courts now ask you to disclose AI use, so check your local rules.

I already filed something an AI helped write. What should I do? Check every citation right away, and talk to a lawyer about whether you need to correct the record. Fixing a mistake you caught yourself lands far better than waiting for the other side to find it.

Thinking about handling your own divorce, or already waist-deep and wondering what you can safely do yourself? Talk to us before you file, not after. Brown Carrington helps families across Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Colorado, Georgia, and Florida.

This article is general information, not legal advice about your situation.

Last updated: October 22, 2026

Sources: Nebraska Public Media, “Nebraska Supreme Court blasts AI-authored court filings, recommends discipline” (October 2026), https://nebraskapublicmedia.org/en/news/news-articles/nebraska-supreme-court-blasts-ai-authored-court-filings-recommends-discipline/; Arizona Mirror (July 16, 2026), https://azmirror.com/2026/07/16/az-court-of-appeals-citing-fake-ai-generated-cases-can-get-you-sanctioned-no-matter-your-intent/; GC AI, “AI Hallucination Legal Cases: A Sanctions Tracker (2026),” https://gc.ai/blog/ai-hallucination-legal-cases. [Add links to the California child-support appeal and the Oregon federal sanction before publishing.]