A topic that comes up sometimes during or after a West Virginia Divorce is who lives in the house after two people are considered to be separate and apart. No provision in the West Virginia code allows for you to necessarily make one person or the other leave the house, at least until the temporary hearing. Some ways do exist to get the person out of the house under somewhat extraordinary circumstances. For example, let’s say that the other person has committed domestic violence against you. If this happens, you can go down and file for a domestic violence protective order. As a result of that, the person can be made to leave the house, at least until you get to the hearing on the domestic violence petition. However, there’s no kind of emergency provisions that exist for requiring or making one person or the other leave the house.
One thing that you have some times in West Virginia is two people who are separated living in the same house while the divorce proceeding is going on. Most of the time, living together is not advisable. Sometimes it is, but for the most part it’s not. You have to have a large degree of cooperation and the ability to get along well together for that to happen. The number one you want to consider is if you can live with your ex? You also need to be thinking about if there is a chance that there’s going to be some sort of incident because you are both living under the same roof? If there’s been domestic violence in the past, then that would be a good reason that you might want to move out. Another reason you may want to think about living apart is if you feel there’s going to be a false allegation of domestic violence involved.
It’s really important that you give this a lot of thought and in terms of whether you move out or not. You should speak with an attorney at least briefly about what you should be doing. That’s one of the factors that is sometimes used as leverage when it comes to for example, parenting. If you move out of the house and the other spouse is left in the house with the children, then that can be used as some leverage when it comes to the parenting plan. It’s really important that you’ve come up with a plan and think about whether it’s likely that there’s going to be some sort of incident going into the future if you remain in the house. These are some circumstances in which one or both people might want to consider remaining in the marital home or not after the two of you have in a legal sense, separated.
