Santa Clarita Divorce : Do I Have To Be Separated Before Filing For Divorce : Divorce 661

When you call to speak to me about using our services for your Santa Clarita Divorce, one of the questions I will ask you is, “if your are still living together or if you have separated already”.  For those that say they are already living apart will often say, “we are separated, but not legally”.

This is an area which causes a lot of confusion for people. They think either one of two things. First, they think that they have to be physically separated for it to count as a separation. Second, they think they have to become legally separated first as a condition before filing for divorce.

So let’s discuss these two issues.

Do I Have To Be Separated Before Filing For Divorce?

The answer is NO. While in some States, you have to by physically separated, in California, you do not need to be physically separated for any specific period of time. In fact, you do not have to be separated at all prior to filing your Santa Clarita Divorce.  If you are not physically separated you will simply use the date you are filing your Santa Clarita divorce as the date of separation.

Do You Have To Be Legally Separated To File For Divorce?

Again, NO! There are people that believe that they have to first file for Legal Separation first, before they can file for divorce.  This is not the case. You don’t file for legal separation and then file for divorce. I have had people do that before contacting our Santa Clarita Divorce service simply because they thought you had to first file for legal separation.

If you find yourself in the situation where you already filed for legal separation and now realize you want to divorce, there are two situations you may find yourself in.

1. Filed For legal separation, but case not finalized – There is good news here. If you filed for legal separation and your case is not finalized and judgement has not been entered, you can filed an amended Petition and request your case become a divorce. This is good because you won’t have to file a new divorce case with the court and have to pay the court fees again.
2. Filed for legal Separation and case IS finalized – If you filed for legal separation and your legal separation case has already finalized, you can still obviously get divorced, but you will have to start a new case. The good news is that you won’t have to revisit all the issues related to custody and property because that would have all been handled in the legal separation case, but you will have to pay the court fees and start a new case altogether.