If you’re getting divorced, and your wife has asked you to leave the house, should you leave?

There are two situations that we need to deal with, in very very different ways.

Let’s imagine situation number one:

• You don’t have any kids:

If you don’t have any kids it’s probably just fine to move out of the house. Make sure the mortgage gets paid make sure the utilities still get paid and that you don’t go into foreclosure. But if you want to move out, that’s okay, you’re not abandoning the house, you’re not gonna lose that on equity in the house, you’re going to be just fine. So if you don’t have kids, and you want to move out, you can move out

Situation number two:

• You do have children, this is a totally different discussion than situation number one…

If you are a dad, and you want anything like 50/50 custody with your children, my general rule (and what I tell men) is that you do not leave the house.

Your wife can ask you a thousand times, every day of the week, you do not leave the house.

Go live in the basement, go living on the couch, do whatever, but do not leave that house if you want 50/50, or anything like 50/50 custody of your children.

The reason for this is that, if you move out and your wife thinks its too small, or she finds some problem with it, she’s not going to give you 50/50 custody when you move out. Then one, two, three, four months later, after not exercising 50/50 custody, you haven’t really seen your kids that often, and you then you get divorced, she’s gonna say, “well he’s not around the kids, so why should he get 50/50 custody?”. As Utah divorce attorneys, we see this all the time.

So stay in that house, you can move out after you’ve filed for divorce, if you talk with your lawyer and you think that’s okay, but do not move out of that house before you file for divorce.

I hope this helps.