Why choose a legal separation instead of a divorce?
One advantage is that the residency requirement is shorter for a legal separation, and allows a spouse to start a legal separation more quickly than a divorce. For a legal separation, a spouse must be a residence of the county for at least 30 days. But to file a divorce, a spouse has to be a resident in the county for 30 days and a resident in the State for at least 6 months. Additionally, some health insurance plans, by their contractual language, only terminate coverage for divorced spouses, but not for legally separated spouses. Therefore, the non-employee spouse may continue health care coverage on his/her legally separated employed spouse’s insurance. In order to save money on obtaining new health care coverage, a non-employee spouse may pursue a legal separation instead of a divorce. Further, some people are legally separated for religious reasons.
