You may blame your spouse for causing the end of the marriage by having an affair. For some people, cheating is anything physical. Some people see cheating as an emotional affair with another person. Some people could include financial deception as cheating. Whether it’s financial cheating, emotional cheating, or an actual affair, the state of California does not care how the marriage ends.
A spouse’s gambling or risky investments that lost the retirement savings have a monetary value. How do you put a price on a broken heart, or the disappointment of retirement being delayed? Simply trying to prove those intangibles in front of a judge can be emotionally and financially taxing.
In the state of California, we have no-fault divorce. Instead of forcing you to prove what went wrong in a marriage, all that is required for a divorce is that the marriage cannot be saved. You cannot live together as a marital partnership any longer and just want to divide assets and go your separate ways. Any type of cheated won’t matter to a judge. The judge only considers the family code when coming up with a decision. because you probably each have a different idea of what went wrong in the marriage.
If the financial betrayal or sexual betrayal is really important to you, then Mediation or Collaborative Divorce may be a better option than a traditional litigated divorce. Mediation or Collaborative Divorce both give the opportunity to have any emotional traumas be considered in the settlement agreement that you reach outside of court. You can agree to any terms you want outside of the courthouse, regardless of what the family code says. The court will not give you any satisfaction. It will only give you a divorce settlement.
Choosing the Mediation or Collaborative Divorce approach can’t totally get rid of your emotional traumas, but it may help you come up a solution that allows for some satisfaction.
