A Story About A Separation

               It doesn’t happen often, but from time to time I meet with people who have been separated from their spouse for months or even years.  There are a lot of reasons why this happens, but often it is just easier to ignore the other person, and just go about your life without him or her.

               What many people don’t know is that just because you may not have even talked to your spouse in all that time, that doesn’t mean that the law will treat that time apart as any different than if you had been living together.  A trial court will look at the subjective opinions of the parties when determining when the “cut off” date for the marriage should be set.  Because this is a subjective test, if it benefits one party to include all that time they were informally separated into the marriage, it may very well happen that way.

               I represented a party to a divorce many years ago.  The parties had been separated for over ten years, and hadn’t even talked in all that time.  One party lived in Washington, and the other party moved to the mid-west.  During that period of separation things went well for one party – his business grew, he purchased property, and he had money in the bank.  Things did not go so well for the other party – she had trouble holding down a job, and she ended up with no real assets.

               When the case came to trial, the wife testified that despite having had no contact with her husband in those many years, she had always believed that they would get back together again and that the marriage would be better than ever.  The court decided, based on that subjective “belief”, that all those years of separation were to be included into the marriage.  The wife got a large share of everything that was earned by the husband during their separation.

               Even relatively short separation periods can be a problem for some people.  The actions of one party may very well create a financial burden for both parties.  A simple way to draw that line in the sand is to file for a dissolution or legal separation.  That date of filing will be used by the court to determine the actual separation date, and greatly limit claims by either party for assets or responsibility for debts incurred after that date.  Ignoring the issue is seldom a good way to achieve a positive final result.  Informal separations are not in your best interest, and can cause significant financial issues that might have been otherwise avoided.