Separate Maintenance or Divorce: Which is Right for You?

“Legal separation” is a marital state that doesn’t exist in Michigan. Here, the equivalent is called “Married with Separate Maintenance.” The idea being to enforce the notion that you are still married, but still allow for the fact that the two of you are living independent lives, each paying their own way.

Filing for Separate Maintenance
The requirements for obtaining an Order of Separate Maintenance are identical for those of getting divorced: you must have resided in Michigan for at least 180 days, and you must give grounds for divorce (though, because we are a no-fault state, those grounds essentially amount to “we don’t get along and we’re not going to start getting along, either”. Unlike with a divorce, there is no waiting period to begin a case for Separate Maintenance; the moment you file, you can get a court date and begin the process.

The legal process of entering Separate Maintenance are also identical to those of getting divorced. That means you go through identical division of property, child custody, spousal support, and child support procedures, and the court issues a Judgment of Separate Maintenance just like it would order a Judgment of Divorce.

Why Enter Separate Maintenance if You Still Have to Do All That Stuff?
There are a few reasons to go for Separate Maintenance rather than a formal divorce. Most of those reasons are not legal ones, but rather moral or religious grounds: Separate Maintenance allows you to get out of a relationship that has become untenable without actually getting divorced, which some people find more acceptable than a divorce.

However, there are a few legal reasons why Separate Maintenance might be useful. Notably, because you are still legally married, there are a number of rights that you retain in relationship to your spouse, including (but not limited to):

• Visitation in hospitals or other medical institutions,
• Maintaining the citizenship rights granted by a marriage,
• Remaining on your spouse’s health insurance plan, and
• Filing joint tax returns.

Reuniting after Separate Maintenance
Many couples use Separate Maintenance as a way of ‘testing the waters of divorce,’ as one of my peers puts it. That’s because of what is perhaps the single biggest benefit of Separate Maintenance: it’s ridiculously easy to terminate. All you have to do in order to reunite after a Judgment of Separate Maintenance is file a Motion of Rejoined Maintenance, and resume cohabitation.

Divorcing after Separate Maintenance
When it comes to divorcing after a Judgment of Separate Maintenance, there’s two ways it can go. If everything has remained more-or-less as it was when the Judgment of Separate Maintenance was issued, it’s easy: the judge issues a Judgment of Divorce and copy-pastes all of the same clauses from the Judgment of Separate Maintenance over to the Judgment of Divorce.

If things are meaningfully different, it can be just the opposite: the judge can declare that circumstances have changed enough that some or all of the issues must be readdressed. It’s most common to see custody arrangements, spousal support, and child support gone through again while the separation of property remains as it was. If the separately-maintaining spouses spent any meaningful time cohabitating or otherwise commingling assets or debts while separated, however, you can expect to go through the whole shebang over again.