I did mine through Legalzoom. You fill out the forms online and they put it together. When you get the forms, double check as they did make a few mistakes and we had to fix them and send them back but they redid them as part of the $300 we paid. Filing in the court where you live, I believe you have to be there to do it but I am not sure as he did go to the court. Make sure you file in the right county. You don't really need anyone to fill in blanks for you though and that's all the online people will do with the addition of having someone to call and ask questions. The questionnaire online was a bit easier to go through than the actual forms themselves if we had just printed the forms and filled them out manually. Reminds me of using TurboTax for taxes, depending on your answer, the online questionnaire took you to the proper next question so that made it easier.
They give no legal advice, just fill in advice and terminology when you are unsure. As to what to do for how to split stuff up and child support, only a paid lawyer will do that. We went to the California child support calculators to determine child support values, got a range and then took the middle value. That was fine with us, we decided for ourselves how to split things but ran into how to word certain things and that's when we called them for help. Oh, and it was nice they put together a step by step process of each form, what needs to be signed, how to sign it including the server on which line to sign and what to do exactly with the final forms. You are always worried you'd mess up signing something and they put it together well enough for me. Better than paying a lawyer, easier than going alone.
The divorce forms are turned into the clerk. There's no harm in finding out if someone else can turn them in for you. Worse case, you'd have to wait until you are back in the states anyway. So if you want to try now to get it started, just fill the forms online, print them out, sign and send it someone who can turn them in for you and see if it will be accepted.
After that, someone who is over 18 but not your child can "serve" you. My husband gave it to my best friend to give to me. She filled out the form saying she gave it to me and then mailed the form back to him saying she did her job. Then I signed all the forms and handed him the papers (I think you have 30 days to go over the paper work but since we worked on the terms together I just glanced over them to make sure there were no surprises and then signed and gave them back in a week).
He has them now and since he filed he has to turn them into the courts. From there, we wait 6 months and 1 day. At some point I guess we'll have a court date.
This site links you to all the forms and how to fill them out online as well:
http://www.courts.ca.gov/1225.htm
Good luck and feel free to contact me. Things will happen and sometimes you need someone to gripe with. I'm not a lawyer but I can give only my own experiences so far. Our court filing fee I think was $300-400 dollars. You split the cost but you do need that money to pay to for it. He paid for it and didn't make me pay but if you do it alone, you both share the cost.