Legal Separation & Annulments
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Lady Justice Divorce understands how trying a divorce can become. We want to help you make the best choices, the right choices for you and the ones you love.
Through our online and in person services, we are committed to help you obtain the outcomes you want and need in order to move forward with your life plans and goals. Ideally, we would like to help you move through a peaceful and rational divorce process. Although this doesn’t always end up being the case, we will give you our very best so you can work towards a healthy, sustainable future.
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What Is Legal Separation?
Legal separation is a command from the court that warrants the duties and rights of couples while they are still in marriage, but do not live together. For divorce, the couples are not married anymore. Legal separations are rare; however, they are instrumental when spouses are going through financial or personal challenges interfering with their marriage.
What's the Difference Between Legal Separation and Divorce?
In a legal separation, you will be able to retain healthcare as well as other social benefits that are not available in divorce. In a legal separation, you are allowed to retain the marital status hence not free to remarry, but after divorce, you can remarry.
As a spouse, you remain next of kin, and you can make financial or medical decisions for each other in legal separation. If you divorce, you are no longer recognized in decision making. Debts are solved in the process of dissolution in divorce, but in a legal separation, you are responsible for each other’s debt as a spouse.
Your property’s legal right as a spouse will be preserved in legal separation if the partner passes on, but in divorce, these rights are terminated. There is a possibility of reconciliation in legal separation. Reconciliation is not possible in a divorce. Only remarrying is acceptable in divorce if you need legal reunification.
In both legal separation and divorce proceedings, the court may decide as follows: Maintenance in the separation, visitation of the child, division of property among the couples, and child’s custody. However, the division of property is dependent on the spouse’s situation and how the spouse relates to it.
Division of Property
Situations may come up that may make you live apart from your spouse, and you may wish to terminate the marriage. There are state laws that allow you to file no-fault divorce and be distant from each other for a specific period. This will have an impact on the division of property. Debts and property you accumulate while living in different residential areas are differently classified based on where the spouse lives. The classification of the property will be determined depending on whether you, as a spouse has the intention of terminating the marriage.
Trial Separation
It is viewed in the form of the spouse’s time in the marriage though it lacks legal impact. Any debt or property you obtain during the separation trial is considered to have been acquired during the marriage hence marital property.
Permanent Separation
This is when couples terminate the marriage for good and decide to be apart. Debts and property you accumulate after permanent separation are regarded as separate. However, if you amass debt as a spouse after separating permanently but before the final divorce and it was for the benefit of the family, it is considered to be a joint debt for the couple. These could include payments of houses, home maintenance, and children’s care expenses.
Benefits of Legal Separation
Legal separation may appeal to you if you don’t need a divorce, however, if you want to stay apart from your spouse and have issues such as division of property, support of the child, and custody of the child need to be legally clarified. As Lady Justice Divorce, we offer these services so that you can continue to enjoy financial security that comes with remaining married as well as religious beliefs that can conflict upon divorce.
Legal clarity benefit is also available. Rights to the property are divided between the spouses, the same to the custody of the child, support of the child, and spouse’s support obligation. Even though the couples could quickly agree on these without involving the court, the legal process makes it easier to enforce the rights should there be any dispute. Factors that may make you seek legal separation are abandonment, cruelty, adultery, and incompatibility. Similarly, to divorce, it’s through the court’s approval that the rights can be modified.
Common Law Property
Ownership of property during the marriage, upon divorce or death of a spouse, is based on whether you live in a community property state or common law property. Upon the death of a spouse, their separate property is divided as per will or as per probate in case there is no will. Marital property distribution depends on the individual spouse’s share in the ownership.
In case the ownership was ‘tenancy in common,’ the property will go to a different person, and not the surviving partner, based on the deceased’s will. Because not all property has deed or title, the person who purchased it or received it in gift form will have its own.
Community Property
These are owned in the ratio of 50:50 by both spouses. The property here includes earnings, as well as property, bought using the revenues, and the debts accumulated in marriage. Community-based property starts with marriage and terminates with the physical separation of a couple with no intention of proceeding with marriage.
Child Support
Child support is often contentious and stressful for parents. If you separated recently and in need of money for a child’s support, or trying to enforce an order against a spouse who doesn’t want corporate, you are in the right place. We will help you understand where your spouse’s operations are legal or not.
Obligations of child support are based on whether one spouse has sole custody, or there is joint custody. In the case of single custody, the other spouse must pay for the support. In the case of joint custody, obligations for the child support are determined by each spouse’s income and the amount of time the child spends with each spouse.
Factors that determine the needed support are financial requirements including insurance cover, special needs, and education, needs and income of the parent with sole custody, ability, and income of the spouse who is to pay the support, and the living standards of the child before the divorce or separation occurred.
Factors that may lead to modification of the child’s support are: increase in the cost of living, an increase in parent’s income, unfortunate disability to either spouse and if the child’s needs grow. Our legal representation is designed to serve you to make them less stressful and transparent. For further inquiries about legal separation, child custody and divorce, feel free to contact us.