A typical bifurcation case is one in which one spouse wants to remarry before all the other issues such as child custody, visitation, support, distribution of property and attorney fees are resolved. For example, you want to be divorced for whatever reason and let’s say one of you wants to get married since you have been separated and you just have your reasons that you want to be divorced. However, there are still issues to be worked out. Sometimes what the court will do in this situation is that they will divide it up and they’ll go ahead and divorce you and your spouse. After the divorce, you and your spouse will still have all of the other issues remaining to settle at a future date.
It’s fairly uncommon for that scenario to happen, though it does happen in some instances. For example, you want to get remarried or hate being married to that person any longer. Now it’s usually not going to make that much of a difference because what’ll happen is you’re going to be back within a couple of months. However, there are circumstances in which things might be delayed past a couple of months and you might want to be divorced. Sometimes it actually makes it more complicated for the judges and they don’t want to divorce people in that case. The reason is because sometimes people will get divorced and then at that point they just don’t care about resolving all of the other issues that were remaining.
The thinking from some judges is to not go ahead and divorce people in these instances. It’s going to put the pressure on them to maybe settle. Now, some judges don’t take that approach. All of the other issues such as alimony, property division, child custody, child support, any dividing pensions and all of those issues would remain acceptable on paper. You’re going to be divorced. That’s really the only difference. You can get divorced and not resolve everything, but sometimes you might want to do it and sometimes you might not want to. Overall, it’s going to be up to the judge to decide whether he or she is going to go ahead and divorce you or not prior to all of the issues being resolved.
