Does the rea­son you’re get­ting di­vorced mat­ter?

De­pend­ing on which state you’re get­ting di­vorced in, the rea­son you’re get­ting di­vorced ei­ther does­n’t mat­ter or mat­ters a lot.

Many ar­ti­cles talk about the fact that you can get a “no-fault” di­vorce in any state. It is true that in a true no-fault state, the rea­son you’re get­ting di­vorced does­n’t mat­ter. But in al­most all other states get­ting a no-fault di­vorce takes longer – some­times a lot longer. This is be­cause many states have dif­fer­ent wait­ing pe­ri­ods for no-fault di­vorce.  

As a point of his­tor­i­cal back­ground, most states en­cour­age mar­riage as be­ing a good thing.  There­fore, in or­der to end a mar­riage, a suf­fi­cient le­gal rea­son had to be es­tab­lished to grant the di­vorce.  Through the past few decades, no-fault states now view an in­di­vid­u­al’s right to end a mar­riage as be­ing just as im­por­tant, if not more im­por­tant, than mak­ing some­one prove a le­gal rea­son that a di­vorce should be granted.

True no-fault states are ones that don’t al­low ether spouse to claim the other is a fault, so the rea­son you’re get­ting di­vorced does­n’t mat­ter.

In a true no-fault state the rea­son you’re get­ting di­vorced does­n’t mat­ter. These true no-fault states in­clude: Cal­i­for­nia, Col­orado, Dis­trict of Co­lum­bia, Florida, Hawaii, In­di­ana, Iowa, Kansas, Ken­tucky, Michi­gan, Min­nesota, Mis­souri, Mon­tana, Ne­braska, Nevada, Ore­gon, Wash­ing­ton, and Wis­con­sin.

Other states im­pose wait­ing pe­ri­ods, de­pend­ing on what’s al­leged as the rea­son for di­vorce. For ex­am­ple, in New Jer­sey di­vorce can be granted af­ter a mar­ried cou­ple is con­tin­u­ously sep­a­rated for 18-months or af­ter just 6-months if there are ir­rec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences.  

In some states peo­ple may still choose to file for a tra­di­tional fault di­vorce, so they can avoid long wait­ing pe­ri­ods.

An­other way of putting grounds for di­vorce can be thought of as the le­gal rea­son for di­vorce. The fault grounds for di­vorce vary from state to state, al­though most “fault” states grounds in­clude: in­com­pat­i­bil­ity, liv­ing sep­a­rately, mar­riage break­down, ex­treme cru­elty, aban­don­ment, adul­tery, im­pris­on­ment, etc.

To speed up the process in most fault states, you need to say more than sim­ply not want­ing to be mar­ried any­more.

“Ir­rec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences” or mar­riage break­down, is the ground that most Amer­i­cans are fa­mil­iar with. The key to this ground is the court de­ter­min­ing if rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is pos­si­ble.  The test for this in most states is sub­jec­tive in na­ture, and it is pos­si­ble for one spouse to file for di­vorce un­der this ground and the other spouse to want to re­main mar­ried be­liev­ing that rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is pos­si­ble.  Un­der this sce­nario, most states will grant the di­vorce.

Com­mon fault grounds for di­vorce are adul­tery, de­ser­tion, cru­elty, in­com­pat­i­bil­ity, liv­ing sep­a­rately and apart.

Adul­tery is de­fined dif­fer­ently in var­i­ous ju­ris­dic­tions, but can be thought of as sex­ual re­la­tions be­tween a mar­ried per­son and some­one who is not his or her spouse.  The rea­son adul­tery is a rea­son for di­vorce is the tra­di­tional as­sump­tion that sex­ual re­la­tions should only oc­cur be­tween spouses.

De­ser­tion is a ground for di­vorce in many states.  Like adul­tery, it is sel­dom used to­day as a ground for di­vorce.  An­other word of­ten used by var­i­ous states is aban­don­ment.  This ground is some­what dif­fi­cult to de­fine in gen­eral as each state has a dif­fer­ent le­gal de­f­i­n­i­tion of what con­sti­tutes de­ser­tion or aban­don­ment.  In gen­eral, de­ser­tion oc­curs when a spouse vol­un­tar­ily leaves his or her spouse, with the in­tent to not come back, with­out the ap­proval of the other spouse and with­out jus­ti­fi­ca­tion.

Cru­elty has long been a ground for di­vorce.  Cru­elty is when one spouse phys­i­cally or emo­tion­ally causes harm to the other spouse or threat­ens to phys­i­cally abuse the other spouse which re­sults in the im­pair­ment of health or other bod­ily symp­toms.  This ground for di­vorce has been widely used in the past and has been ex­panded to in­clude the emo­tional harm el­e­ments in most states as be­ing as bad or dan­ger­ous as the phys­i­cal abuse.

Liv­ing sep­a­rately is an­other ground for di­vorce.  Nor­mally, this ground is in­voked when spouses have vol­un­tar­ily lived sep­a­rately and apart for a pe­riod of time usu­ally de­fined by state statute.    

In many fault states you must live sep­a­rately for one to three years to use that as a rea­son for di­vorce. 

The sep­a­ra­tion must be per­ma­nent and not tem­po­rary in na­ture.  In other words, if a cou­ple de­cides to sep­a­rate tem­porar­ily and then de­cides af­ter a pe­riod of time that it is a per­ma­nent sep­a­ra­tion, the time pe­riod will run from the time in­ten­tions change. 

In­com­pat­i­bil­ity is a some­what re­cent ad­di­tion as a ground to di­vorce.  The gen­eral de­f­i­n­i­tion for this ground is a deep con­flict in per­son­al­i­ties and tem­pera­ments that makes it im­pos­si­ble for them to have a nor­mal mar­i­tal re­la­tion­ship and that rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is im­prob­a­ble.  This ground is widely used in the few states that do rec­og­nize it as a ground for di­vorce.

Manda­tory par­ents’ ed­u­ca­tion pro­grams have also been cre­ated in states like New Jer­sey, to help make it eas­ier for the chil­dren to cope with a di­vorce.

If in a true no-fault state the rea­son you’re get­ting di­vorced does­n’t mat­ter which can some­times. make things eas­ier. In cer­tain sit­u­a­tions it may be worth con­sid­er­ing where you can file for di­vorce, if for ex­am­ple sep­a­rated spouses a each liv­ing in dif­fer­ent states.  

Even if spouses agree that they want to be di­vorced, they may still dis­agree about re­lated is­sues, such as the di­vi­sion of prop­erty, al­imony pay­ments, etc. So, re­gard­less of whether you seek a fault or no-fault di­vorce, the Court many still need to de­cide on prop­erty rights, al­imony, vis­i­ta­tion rights and child sup­port.