Child Custody And Divorce: Free Legal Advice
Child Custody And Divorce: Free Legal Advice
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That may be the case, but you're still going to get divorced. Most states have "no fault" divorce now, and that means that if either of the parties want to get divorced, if either of the parties is willing to stand up and say "This marriage is over, I don't want to be married", then the judge has no option but to grant the divorce. The big task is the division of the marital estate.
The judge is going to try to divide the property more or less "equally" between the parties. That doesn't mean necessarily mathmatically equal, and certainly doesn't mean equal "to the penny".
But the state of the law, generally, has been hampered by a few things over the years, and the law has changed, has grown, as follows:
1. In the old days, when you needed to establish "grounds" for a divorce, fault mattered a lot: if you were the "guilty party" then you might walk out with nothing, or damn near nothing. After all, you were the guilty party, so whaddaya want?
2. When the no-fault statutes were passed, the old timers were horrified. "You don't mean that fault doesn't matter AT ALL, do you? You don't mean that the "guilty party" can't be discriminated against, do you?" And the courts answered "No, we didn't take it that way [what the legislature did, in passing the new divorce statute: courts don't pass laws, courts only interpret them]". And so the courts started issuing opinions, one case at a time, that, well, fault isn't required anymore to get a divorce, but fault still matters when it comes to property division: the person at fault will get less, the person not at fault will get more. A lot more?
3. Not a lot more. Perhaps that depends on the facts, and the courts are still free to be extreme, in an extreme situation (they always have been, and they always will be), but the SPARKS case makes clear that in a non-extreme case, the division should be pretty close to fifty-fifty. The case also makes clear that non-violent adultery is not sufficient "fault" to deviate from fifty-fifty as far as to get to seventy-thirty (70% to the non-guilty party, and only 30% to the guilty [of adultery] party). The Supreme Court held that "fault" was only one of the factors to be considered, and that the trial court had given too much weight to just the "fault" factor. The dissenting opinion wouldn't consider "fault" at all, but that is still not the majority view (in Michigan. It is the majority view in other states: see the footnotes to the case).
Here is the Michigan Supreme Court's opinion:Sparks v. Sparks
The footnotes may make reference to your state law, as it was in 1992, when the opinion was written. Obviously, check with your attorney as to just what the state of the law is at this time.
So, as you can see from the opinion, divorce nowadays is just a matter of getting the property divided, and getting it over with. The fact that the other party is "at fault" for causing the divorce doesn't mean that he or she is going to be tossed out on the street with nothing. It MAY mean that you get more than half, and it MAY mean that alimony is appropriate or not appropriate, DEPENDING ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES. ALL OF THEM. But as to the notion that the person "at fault" for the divorce gets zip, that old unfairness is gone. And probably should be.
Good luck with it.