We understand just how distraught you might be after discovering that your spouse committed adultery. While we support your decision to initiate a divorce case against them, we ask that you not let your emotions drive your actions, especially if there are small children involved. After all, citing adultery as your fault-based grounds may be enough to have the New Jersey family court favor you in their decisions for alimony, child custody, child support, and property division. With that said, please follow along to find out whether adultery has a financial impact on the final judgment of your divorce and how a proficient Morris County divorce lawyer at Graves Andrews, LLC can help you get the outcome you are hoping for.
What financial impact does adultery have on a divorce?
The New Jersey family court cannot use their final order as a means of punishing your spouse for their adultery. However, they may carefully consider how this act affected you and your small children while you were still married. For one, they may hold them to a higher alimony order and child support order if they found that your spouse took marital funds away from you and your children to buy gifts for or otherwise financially support the person they were seeing. In turn, since your spouse gave away these marital funds that would have otherwise been split equitably in your property division proceedings, they may leave you with higher value assets and properties.
Lastly, the court may find that your spouse was rather absentee from your children’s lives and spent more time with the other person they were seeing. With this, the court may not trust them as parentally fit and capable of being caring and present while your children on under their supervision. This may have them sooner consider assigning them with supervised visitation rights than joint custody rights. Again, if you have sole custody rights, you may be entitled to higher monthly child support payments.
How do I prove that my spouse committed adultery?
It is not right to falsely accuse your spouse of adultery or any other fault-based ground in an effort to garner more favorable divorce outcomes. So, first of all, you should know that the definition of adultery is voluntary, sexual relations with anyone other than your spouse. From here, you must provide the New Jersey family court with edivence that your spouse committed such. If you cannot get direct admissions from your spouse or the person they were seeing, you may need to rely on circumstantial evidence that your spouse had both the inclination and opportunity to commit adultery.
For example, you may gather hotel receipts that indicate that your spouse and this other person stayed together on certain nights. Or, you may compare their flight receipts to establish that they traveled to the same locations during the same periods of time. You may go as far as obtaining their phone records for call logs, text messages, email communications, social media interactions, and even saved photos and videos of them together. You may even get lucky and have third parties step forward with eyewitness testimonies or photos of them performing public displays of attention, among other things.
To conclude, you must be fully equipped to enter your upcoming divorce proceedings. Your preparation is incomplete without hiring a talented Morristown family law attorney. Contact Graves Andrews, LLC today.
