A common question you may hear when people are getting divorced is what happens at the temporary hearing in a West Virginia divorce? Once a divorce petition has been filed and after an answer has been filed, the next thing that’s going to happen is what we call a temporary hearing. At the temporary hearing the court is going to set things on a temporary basis. Now, one thing to keep in mind though is that sometimes the judge does have the option of going ahead and making it a final hearing. That is an option that’s available in many instances, but usually if there’s any kind of contested divorce hearing, the judge is going to set the temporary hearing and that means that things are going to be set on a temporary basis. Things that have to be addressed now rather than later are going to be addressed at the temporary hearing.
One thing that’s going to be addressed is who gets the kids and when. That’s going to be clearly set at the temporary hearing. If the couple divorcing can’t work it out, then what the court will do is the court will resolve it for them. The court will say this is what, when this person has the children, this is when that person has the children. Something will be set on a temporary basis. That’s one thing that the court will do at the temporary hearing. The other thing that the court will do is usually run the child support formula. What the court will do is make an analysis as to who’s going to be paying who and what the amount is. It’s based on the state guidelines. There’s actually a computer program that the court will be using to calculate this.
The other thing that the court is going to do on a temporary basis is going to make a decision as to who is responsible for what bills. The two people will likely have all sorts of bills that need to be paid, might be credit cards, might be car payments, might be payments on the home. There are all sorts of things that need to be paid on a temporary basis. The court will make that determination. The other thing that the court will do is make a determination about spousal support. It’s not a given that the court is going to award spousal support, but sometimes they will do that at the temporary hearing. One of the things that the court will do is sometimes do a combination of child support, spousal support and set who is the person being responsible for certain payments.
It really just depends on the circumstances. There’s also a number of procedural things the court can do. The court can establish what we call a constructive trust, which is basically a fancy way of saying that one person has a duty to preserve the assets of the estate and the other person is entitled to be reimbursed in the event that there is some sort of waste that happens or if property is disposed. The other thing done at the temporary hearing is the court will set temporary possession of the home, who gets temporary possession of the motor vehicles and more. Those are all things that are going to happen at the temporary hearing. The court order will outline very clearly who is responsible for what.
That is generally going to apply unless there’s some sort of emergency until the time at which you go to court on the final hearing where the court makes a final determination of all the issues on the merits if there’s no agreement on certain issues. At any step along the way, even for a temporary hearing, you can come up with an agreement with the other person. If a couple does this, there’s a very good chance that the court will accept that agreement.
