If your spouse’s whereabouts are in question, you will still file a divorce petition the same way you would if your spouse were available. That means completing and submitting court forms and paying the filing fees. After that step, you will need to serve your spouse with the divorce papers. For those who cannot locate the spouse to serve the divorce papers, it will usually be necessary to take the following steps:
File a request with the court to serve the other spouse via publication: With this request, the court will want to see some proof that you have taken reasonable steps to try to find and serve your soon-to-be-ex-spouse and that those steps have not been successful.
Complete service by publication: This involves taking out an ad in a newspaper of your choice and running a notice of your divorce in that publication for the required period of time.