Quote: (10-27-2015 06:59 PM)HankMoody Wrote:
Quote: (10-27-2015 06:40 PM)doc holliday Wrote:
Hank, I do agree that staying in the marital home can be fraught with disaster so I guess I should say that it is case specific. In my case, my children are teenagers with whom I have a very tight relationship with so that probably prevented my soon to be ex from trying that extreme.
Even in my case though, it hasn't been easy living at home but I will say that I wouldn't be where I'm at in my divorce if I had left. Hank, what do you advise your male clients to do when they get served?
Generally as a matter of course, it's to stay in the martial home so you don't lose rights to it.
However, keep in mind that the narrative is always that you "abandoned the martial residence". The law presumes you're a deadbeat who up and left for no good reason, probably because you want to bang young girls and not deal with having kids.
Of course, they always omit the fact that you left because you moved the tuna fish so your wife called the cops and filed for a restraining order, claiming you threw it at her and then tried to burn the place down. When in reality, you simply moved something and she turned it into a shitstorm resulting in the cops being called, even though you did nothing wrong of violent. Nevertheless, you should pay the mortgage, utility bills, and everything else while the court sorts it out. Oh, and did I mention Dave is coming over tonight (the guy with the tattoos who she's "just friends with"), so could you, uh, be somewhere else?
It really depends on how evil and crafty your wife is. If she's willing to fabricate domestic violence incidents, just stay somewhere else while asserting your rights to the property. Family law favors women, and assumes you just left her to shirk parental responsibility and bang younger girls.
The key is to make sure they could never prove you abandoned the family, while at the same time making sure you don't get nailed for fake domestic violence charges.
It's all case specific.
You're showing some real life experience in your posts and it's very clear to me that you aren't some academic who has never seen the inside of a courtroom before (the world is crawling with those types), but I would like to add something here. If you are seeking custody of your children, one of the worst things you can do is leave the marital home without your kids. It can really screw you. If you have to leave, bring the children with you. I'll be the first to say that leaving with the kids is not the best possible scenario, but it is better than abandoning them and better than doing nothing so that your wife can leave with them. Aside from that, I think that abandonment as far as the marriage itself is a very outdated concept. Divorces in most states require a separation. Someone must initiate the separation. Someone must leave at some point. Where I am, I think abandonment has been repealed and out of at least a thousand divorces over the years, I can't ever remember one being granted for abandonment. I can even remember a judge taking abandonment into consideration. If the other side did argue abandonment, you could say that you left with just cause. Also, if you leave the home, your wife stays, and she keeps paying the mortgage, she may be entitled to contribution at the time of the divorce. A judge may or may not order that, but some people leave, stop paying the mortgage, then are surprised that they get hit for thousands in contribution at the time of the divorce. Again, enter into an agreement.