To file a for a divorce in Austin, TX, your lawyer will first file a Petition for Divorce. This is the first step to getting on the Court’s docket and your petition will set forth the reasons for your divorce. Your petition has to show evidence for these grounds.

The grounds may be no fault or fault. The Petition must also be served and delivered to your spouse by a process server, who can be a sheriff or private process server. Your spouse will have a certain number of days to respond. Each county also has local rules that must be complied with.

Note that there is a 60-day waiting period from the time the petition is filed for the divorce to become final. This is the State of Texas’ way of giving the parties a cooling off period so that they have time to make sure they are doing the right thing.

There are many issues that will be worked out during the divorce. It depends on your unique situation, but some common themes to be decided are the award of child support, child custody, how property is divided, whether a party is entitled to spousal support and many more issues.

There are two grounds for divorce in Austin, Texas-a fault and no fault divorce. A no fault divorce just means: “The marriage has become insupportable because of discord or conflict of personalities that destroys the legitimate ends of the marital relationship and prevents any reasonable expectation of reconciliation”

So any reason or no reason at all is grounds for divorce. But, there are times when a party may want to allege fault to try and better position your case. These fault grounds are:

Adultery; Imprisonment or conviction of a felony; Imprisoned for at least one year for a felon and has not been pardoned; Abandonment whether intentionally or remained apart for at least one year; Insanity and confinement to a mental hospital; Living Separate and apart without cohabitating for minimum of three years; and Mental cruelty

Eric Willie is known as a top divorce attorney in Austin, TX. You can learn more about the Austin Divorce Lawyers at the Law Office of Willie & Dasher by visiting us online.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 28th, 2008 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Divorce. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.