Jamestown, CA Divorce Law Firms & Lawyers

Yes he can. The statutes provide for a petition for conciliation, and when one is filed the court will put the matter on hold while Conciliation Services schedules an appointment. When the conciliation services counseling is unsuccessful the court is notified, and the matter then proceeds.

If you are in a no-fault state, like California (and many others), adultery is not needed in order to divorce and they court does not give you more than your half of community property just because it occurred. Child Support is until the child is 19 or is 18 and has graduated from high school. Each of you may choose to contribute to your adult children's education if you choose to do so. Spousal Support for a marriage which lasted more than 10 years is one in which the court will retain jurisdiction to decide when it should be terminated or when it should be continued. There is a goal that each party become self supporting in a reasonable amount of time, therefore, at some point, if your husband requests it, the court could decide that you have had long enough to become self supporting (even if you haven't done so yet) and terminate or lower the spousal support. If your marriage had been less than 10 years, as a guideline (not a requirement), you would receive spousal support for one-half the length of the marriage, so it you were married only 9 years, you would likely receive spousal support for 4 1/2 years. Based on that, I think 5 years might be a little short, unless it's agreed that the court will reserve Jurisdiction to determine if spousal support is still appropriate in 5 years.

Texas is a common law state, but seven years has nothing to do with it. If you fulfill the elements of common law marriage (agreement that you are married, cohabitation and holding yourselves out in the community as married) you can be common law spouses in seven minutes.