Divorce

30 days, 60 days, 90 days

When you’re getting a divorce there are a lot of time limits, waiting periods, and deadlines.

 

We get a lot of questions about how those work and what they mean.

Let’s start with 30 days: when someone is served with a Complaint, the Summons says they must file an Answer within thirty days. On day 31, the attorney for the Plaintiff may file a Motion for Default Judgment. The Motion is set for a hearing, and in Williamson or Davidson Counties that motion is at least 14 days after the motion is filed. There is some room here, but if you are served with papers you need to do something about it. If you receive a Motion for Default, you need to do something QUICKLY, and if nothing else show up at court on the day of the hearing to ask the judge for more time. If you ignore everything, it doesn’t go away, and you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.

Another 30 day deadline is on discovery responses. When you are issued interrogatories, requests for production of documents, or requests for admission, the other side will be expecting those within 30 days. While sometimes that doesn’t happen, and lawyers can give each other extensions out of professional courtesy, if you’re answering Requests for Admission you have got to get those back to the other side within 30 days or everything could be deemed admitted and you’re at a disadvantage. Don’t lollygag!

Tennessee has waiting periods for divorce of 60 days if you don’t have minor children and 90 days if you do. This is not a deadline, it’s a cooling off period. This means the divorce cannot be finalized before the waiting period has passed, and it begins on the day the Complaint for Divorce is filed with the court. It does not mean that anything happens on the 60th or 90th day, it doesn’t. It just means that even if you have a parenting plan and MDA filed with the Court, you can’t get the divorce finalized until after the waiting period has passed.

Grounds for Divorce

I recently wrote about Inappropriate Marital Conduct, which is the most commonly used grounds for divorce. It is rare that a Complaint for Divorce will include any grounds other than Irreconcilable Differences (“ID”) and/or Inappropriate Marital Conduct. We (divorce lawyers) use inappropriate marital conduct as a sort of umbrella term, to cover all manner of sins. However, there are other grounds allowed by Tennessee statute, and you can use any and all that apply in your case if you really want to.

T.C.A. 36-4-101 provides the following grounds for divorce:

  1. Impotency and the incapability of procreation

  2. Bigamy on the part of either spouse

  3. Adultery on the part of either spouse

  4. Desertion for two years or more

  5. Conviction of a crime which renders the party infamous

  6. Conviction of a crime (felony) and confinement to the penitentiary

  7. Inappropriate marital conduct or cruel and inhuman treatment

  8. Malicious or deliberate attempted murder of that spouse

  9. Habitual drunkenness or drug abuse

  10. Pregnancy at the time of the marriage by another man without the husband’s knowledge

  11. Refusal, on the part of a spouse, to remove with that person’s spouse to this state, without a reasonable cause, and being willfully absent from the spouse residing in Tennessee for two (2) years

  12. The husband or wife has offered such indignities to the spouse’s person as to render the spouse’s position intolerable. Thereby forcing the spouse to withdraw from the marriage.

  13. The husband or wife has abandoned the spouse. Or turned the spouse out of doors for no just cause. And has refused or neglected to provide for the spouse while having the ability to so provide.

  14. For a continuous period of two (2) or more years which commenced prior to or after April 18, 1985, both parties have lived in separate residences, the parties have not cohabitated as man and wife during such period, and there are no minor children of the parties

In addition, your grounds for divorce may be irreconcilable differences, but you can only get an ID divorce in Tennessee if you file a Marital Dissolution Agreement (MDA) and, if you have kids, an agreed parenting plan— that is, you must have a full agreed divorce for it to be granted on the basis of irreconcilable differences. There is one other grounds for divorce that is “no fault,” and that is number 14 above- you’ve been living separately for at least two years and don’t have minor children. Without that separation, and without a full agreement, it has to be somebody’s “fault,” using one of the other grounds provided by the statute.

But it's Uncontested!

Something that we family lawyers hear a lot from potential and new clients is that they’re sure their divorce will be uncontested. And, considering that a vast majority of all divorces eventually settle rather than go to trial, most of them are right, it will be uncontested in the end. But just to be clear, let’s talk about it what does not make an uncontested divorce:

 

  • “We both a want a divorce, so it’ll be uncontested.”

  • “She said she would sign whatever I bring her.”

  • “We agree to almost everything.”

In Tennessee, to be divorced on the grounds of irreconcilable differences and have an uncontested divorce, that means you must agree to everything. Everything in the Marital Dissolution Agreement (including who gets the house, cars, bank accounts, retirement accounts, art on the walls, the dishes in the cabinet, the waffle maker, the dog, and the big screen TV). Everything in the parenting plan, if you have kids. EVERYTHING. If there is even one issue about which the two parties cannot reach an agreement, you do NOT have an uncontested divorce. It also means both parties must cooperate in executing the necessary documents. If you don’t have complete agreement, you have a contested divorce until agreement is reached.

Start a confidential conversation.