Calling It Quits in Alabama: What Are the Legal Grounds for Divorce in Alabama?
It’s Drew Sockwell, your local family law attorney right here in Florence, Alabama. If you’ve been following the blog, we’ve already talked about who can file for divorce and where to file it. Today, we’re going to pour ourselves a tall glass of sweet tea, sit back, and talk about the why.
In the eyes of the law, you can’t just walk into the courthouse, declare "I'm done!", and expect the judge to automatically untie the knot. To get a divorce in the Yellowhammer State, you have to prove you have a legal reason—what us lawyers call "grounds."
Under Alabama law, there are exactly twelve recognized grounds for granting a divorce. Let’s break them down so you know what you’re looking at.
The "Keep the Peace" Route: No-Fault Divorce Nowadays, most folks just want to split their pots, pans, and retirement accounts without airing all their dirty laundry in public. That's where "no-fault" grounds come in. You don't have to prove anyone was the bad guy; you just have to prove the marriage isn't working.
Alabama has two main no-fault grounds:
Incompatibility of temperament: This means your personalities and dispositions clash so deeply that it's impossible to continue a normal marital relationship. As long as the state of incompatibility exists, the court must grant the divorce, even if one spouse really doesn't want it,.
Irretrievable breakdown: This is basically a fancy way of saying the marriage is broken beyond repair and any further attempts to reconcile would be completely futile and not in the family's best interests.
The "Air the Dirty Laundry" Route: Fault Grounds Sometimes, things end badly, and a spouse wants the court to know exactly why. Pleading a "fault" ground can sometimes impact how the judge divides property or awards alimony. Here are the most common fault grounds we see:
Adultery: This means proving your spouse had voluntary sexual intercourse with someone else. And no, just having a "suspicion" or finding a flirty text message isn't always enough to technically prove it, though the courts do look at circumstantial evidence,.
Voluntary Abandonment: If your spouse packs up and leaves for a full year without your consent, without a good reason, and with no intention of returning, you've got grounds for abandonment. But take note: moving into the guest bedroom and refusing to talk to you doesn't count as abandonment.
Violence or Cruelty: This is a very serious ground. It applies when a spouse commits actual physical violence that endangers your life or health, or creates a reasonable fear that such violence will happen.
Habitual Drunkenness or Drug Addiction: You can file for divorce if your spouse becomes habitually addicted to alcohol or drugs. However, there is a catch: they must have acquired the habit after you got married. If you married someone knowing they already had a drinking problem, the judge won't let you use this specific ground.
The Quirky, Old-School Grounds Because our laws have been around for a long time, Alabama still has a few highly specific (and sometimes strange) grounds on the books. You can actually get a divorce for:
Imprisonment: If your spouse gets locked up in the penitentiary for at least two years on a sentence of seven years or longer.
The Surprise Pregnancy: A husband can get a divorce if the wife was pregnant at the time of the wedding, and the husband had absolutely no knowledge of it and wasn't the one responsible.
Incapacity: If, at the time of the marriage, a spouse was physically and incurably incapacitated from consummating the marriage.
Non-support: A wife can get a divorce if she has lived separate and apart from her husband for two years without any financial support from him.
The Bottom Line Whether you're looking for a peaceful split based on incompatibility or you have a more complicated situation involving fault, you have to make sure your complaint checks the right legal boxes to give the court jurisdiction over your case.
If your marriage has gone south and you need help navigating all these rules, give my office a call right here in the Shoals. We'll help you figure out the best path forward to protect your peace of mind and your future.
