A question that comes up from time to time among couples getting divorced in West Virginia is whether they should file for fault based grounds under the law? There are several fault based grounds for divorce in West Virginia. There’s certain reasons that one would want to do it and there are certain reasons that one would not want to do it. One reason to file this would be let’s say that a couple have totally 100% reached some sort of agreement. All issues have been resolved. They are both in complete agreement and they just want to get the divorce over with under those circumstances.
Assuming this is the agreement, reduced to writing and signed by both parties and so forth. That means there’s a fairly good chance that the court is going to pre approve the agreement. It’s not necessarily always going to be the case, but in that instance, one may not want to file for a fault based grounds for divorce. One reason is they don’t know how the person is going to react. What could happen is that the agreement that they’ve reached is no good anymore. The other person might decide to back out and it could just really, cause a lot of problems.
Now when it comes to adultery or what we call cruel and inhuman conduct, those are considered to be fault based grounds. Those are really the two most common ones, but there are some other ones. Now, a reason one might want to actually file for a fault based grounds for divorce is that they want it to have an influence and an impact on the judge. For example, fault based grounds can oftentimes be used as a basis upon which to argue in favor of spousal support. However, it’s generally not going to be considered to be a factor when it comes to property distribution.
One main reason one would want to file for a fault based grounds is that they want to strengthen their alimony case. Okay. There are a lot of other reasons why you may or may not want to, those are just two examples of why you may or may not want to be filing based on fault based grounds. Filing or not filing a fault based grounds for a West Virginia divorce is just something that one needs to be thinking about prior to filing for divorce.
