I'm sorry you are all dealing with such stress from these fools.
Aus, I agree, I don't know that showing up in court will bring closure, but only you really know if that will be better for you. I think for me, I would do whatever I could remotely.
I also wouldn't worry about your words in email making it appear that you knew there were problems in the marriage. You can explain that you were in essence walking on eggshells and avoiding talking about your marriage in terms of reconciling because you were aware he would react with either anger, blame or escalating bad behavior of some kind.
I'm starting to feel like I have a unicorn MLCer. A lot of them go years without divorcing or talking about it, but most times they're clingers, not vanishers.
A lot of them don't start the D, but when the LBS finally starts it, they deal with it in some way, even if it's just arguing and
Some of them are vanishers who go years and years without divorcing, but they do take action and make a show of at least somewhat dealing with divorce (i.e. Anjae's Mr. J and his foolish crazy court cases).
I have the one who vanished and even before I had cancer when I spent all my money doing all the D work and he didn't have to do anything to get it, he still avoided and hid away and stuck his head in the sand. Like the old story of the guy who went out to get cigarettes and just never returned.
I chased him from Dec 2015 to June 2016 for his financial disclosure form. Only got it after one day before he moved 1100 miles away. It was handwritten in chicken scratch penmanship.
Email after email about legal issues sent to him in 2017 went ignored. Texts about legal issues would be ignored or he's respond that he was working and would respond when he had time, which he never did.
I texted him in spring 2017 to tell him the actual date the D would be filed. No response, not even an "Okay." Then two weeks later I got a random text with a picture of my dog and said something about how he'd taken the dog to the beach and the dog loved the waves, etc, but nothing about the D. (And then I found out that the day he sent the picture of the dog was when OW's exH got remarried.
)
And then we all know how it turned out, I got diagnosed with cancer and he faded into the ether and the rest is history...
The desire to be loved is the last illusion. Give it up and you shall be free. ~ Margaret Atwood