My husband and I seperated in March 2009 after I found out he was having an affair. We both moved out of the house we were living in. I moved back home to my house pryer to our marriage and he moved in an apartment. In April of 2009 we reconciled, but still kept our seperate residences. We lived as husband and wife and we were together everyday and night, either at his apt. or at my house. We also renewed our wedding vows in May 2009. We stayed together until August 2009 and I moved back home, because of his cheating again. We reconciled several times untl the end November 2009. My question is, when is it legal to file for a Divorce? He thinks he can file now, since that was the date we moved out of our home and he said there was nothing I can do about it. Please advise me on this.
The last date you lived together as husband and wife was November 2009. An action for divorce cannot be filed until the anniversary date of your final split in November 2010.
In the event he does file the action you will need to file an answer which denies his alleged separation date. The court will then set a hearing and you will testify to the events of the past year.
I am going through a similar thing. My STBEX and I physically separated households in March of 2009. We tried marriage counseling and even tried for a few months during the summer of 2009 on and off to work things out.
She would come and stay at my apartment for a day or two or a weekend then we would end up fighting and split up again; this happened at least 4-5 times.
We never merged our households back together, she maintain her own separate household since March 2009. She never moved into my apartment just stayed there for a few days at a time and I never moved into her house. Since March of 2009 we have not even been living in the same city we have been living in separate addresses 60 miles apart. She is now telling me because we went back and forth that the last time she stayed at my apartment is our official separation date not the date we separated households. I am now at my one year physical seperation of households and would like to file papers and finally move on with my life but she is telling me that I can not file papers. I thought this was the whole reason for the one year thing was to give couples a chance to maybe work things out if they can, not to keep re-starting the clock if they can’t. What is the law on this?
According to the law you are not separated until you have lived separately for one year and a day with at least one of you having the intention to remain living separate and apart. It seems that you did not have that intention at the outset of the separation, and your attending counselling and staying together would also constitute “holding out to the public” that the two of you were still living together as husband and wife. Therefore, the official date of separation would be at the end of the summer 2009, when the two of you stopped working towards a reconciliation.