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Once you and your spouse decide to divorce, it can be very difficult to remain together in the marital home.
And when you have children, it is that much more important to decide whether it’s best to remain in the home together or to separate.
It’s very common to feel you should not have to move out of your own home, especially if it was your spouse who wanted the divorce.
Before making the decision for either one of you to move out of the home, however, here are three very important things to consider:
1. There is generally a legal obligation to contribute to the household expenses in the same manner as during the marriage.
Therefore, in addition to paying for separate living expenses if you move out, you would still likely be obligated to continue contributing to the marital home expenses, such as the mortgage and other expenses and/or child support for the children.
2. Do you have a written child custody and parenting time agreement in place?
Generally, parents in New Jersey have equal rights to child custody of their children.
Therefore, if you intend to be the primary custodial parent, moving out of the home with the children could subject you to court intervention initiated by your spouse and potential sanctions by the court.
If, however, you anticipate being the non-custodial parent, moving out could create a new status quo where you could potentially end up with less parenting time with your children.
Therefore, it’s extremely important to have a written child custody and parenting time agreement in place before either you or your spouse moves out of the marital home.
3. Once you move out, your access to the marital home can become limited.
While you retain a financial interest in the home if you move out, New Jersey law generally implies a right of privacy after a reasonable amount of time, particularly when children live in the home. Therefore, if you need to come to the marital home for any reason, you would generally be expected to give your spouse prior notice with his or her agreement. For more information about this topic, see my post here.
4. How will living together affect your children emotionally?
What many don’t know is that it’s not the actual divorce that’s most destructive to children emotionally. Rather, the ongoing conflict and interaction between you and your spouse can be most damaging to them.
This can include not only actively fighting and shouting, but also treating each other with coldness, indifference or contempt.
The fact is your kids want you to be happy and chances are they know when you’re not. More often than not, they can feel the tension between you and your spouse. As a result, they can experience ongoing anxiety from not knowing what will happen.
For instance, they might experience stomachaches, headaches, act out aggressively, or become withdrawn, socially, emotionally, or both. Their grades might suffer too. For more information, take a look at this post.
Therefore, depending on the degree of hostility between you and your spouse, it might make sense for one of you to move out of the home and minimize further potential emotional harm to the children.
This way, staying involved with your children’s day to day activities in a stress-free environment can let you focus on enjoying time with them.
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