Legal separation is one of those areas of law where we end up with a lot of questions. It really matters, too, because for most of your different grounds of divorce, you’re going to have to prove that you were separated for the statutory period. The only exception to that is adultery – which technically...
It’s never easy to find out – or suspect – that your husband is cheating on you with someone else. If you’ve come to that conclusion, let me say first that I am so sorry that you’ve found yourself here. I know that it’s a harrowing experience and that it’s difficult to know what...
There’s a difference between the way regular, normal, people use the word separated in a sentence and the way Virginia divorce lawyers use the word separated. I think it’s often a little confusing to reconcile the different understandings of the word. For one, because on each side it seems so clear that everyone seems to...
I talk about adultery a lot. To be fair, it comes up a lot. As far as fault based grounds for divorce go, adultery is probably the single most common. There’s no one, single, specific path that “every” divorcing woman takes. A divorce is a journey, and it’s one that can take a LOT...
The questions whether and how long you’ll need to be separated to get a divorce in Virginia are well settled, easy, and very, very clear. In case you’re new to the game, in Virginia you have to be separated for a full year whether you’re using fault or no fault grounds (with the exception of...
Sometimes, I feel really technical when I talk about adultery. I say when someone “commits” adultery, and I always feel weird about it, because that’s not how people talk. And I often get questions about exactly what it means, which is understandable – it’s a technical term, like cohabitation and equitable distribution. Lawyers use it...
Cohabitation is a key component of legal separation in Virginia. For a lot of reasons – chief among them being the fact that separation is a sort of loosey goosey concept here in Virginia – we get lots of questions about separation. When are you separated? Am I separated? Do we have to sign something to...
In Virginia, you have to be separated to get a divorce. In fact, you have to be separated for a year for most types of divorce. (The notable exception to this rule is divorce when you’re using adultery as your grounds, but you should read up on this, and its specific limitations, HERE if that’s something...