Hello, I'm Jacquie Jones, a Jones and associates Law PC. And today I'm going to talk to you about legal separations in the say the Pennsylvania. So for most people, the concept of getting divorced is something thatI just never want to imagine and they have no idea what to do next. But if there are differences, the marriage, people start thinking about things like separating and they've heard this concept of legal separation and they want to know more about it because they want to understand how to move forward through the process if they're not quite ready for a divorce, um, they want to know how much time they have to live separate and apart. They want to know if they had the separate bank accounts and assets and quite frankly, how to function as a newly single person. While I am happy to tell you, there are lots and lots of solutions to help you along the way before a divorce, but legal separation is not one of them.
Speaker 2: That's because Pennsylvania has no such law for legal separation. There are states where you can actually file paperwork and have a legal separation, which means that you can take it to people and say we're separated so we're married but living separately, Pennsylvania doesn't have that. You have to actually live separate and apart. So, um, you determine your separation date based on when you guys mutually agree that we had broken up. Um, one example of that could be the date you file for divorce. Another example could be the date that one of you moves out of the house. But in Pennsylvania you can even be separated while living in the same household. That's right. There are people who cannot afford to move out of the home, but they are living in separate bedrooms or lifting separate apart. They're handling their expenses differently. Um, they are not living as husband and wife that can count a separation for purposes of separation for divorce