In Tennessee, to dissolve a marriage without the other party’s consent requires that you have grounds to divorce. Grounds can be considered the reasons for divorce that are recognized by the state of Tennessee. They range from adultery or abandonment to a catchall ground of inappropriate marital conduct that can include a variety of behaviors that it are “inappropriate” for one married person to do to another. Tennessee Code Section 36-4-101 sets out the fifteen grounds. Among these grounds is one called “irreconcilable differences.”
The problem is that this really isn’t a ground for divorce under Tennessee law.
In Tennessee, to get a divorce for irreconcilable differences, you must have a signed and notarized Marital Dissolution Agreement that sets forth how all the property will be divided and who gets what. If you have children, then you also need a completed parenting plan where you agree on all details and a child support worksheet based on that plan. You must also take a parenting class. If these tasks are completed, you may be granted a divorce within 60 days of filing if you have children, or 90 days if you do not have children.
The items described above need to be signed, notarized, and approved by your ex-spouse. You cannot force your ex-spouse to sign, and there is no legal penalty for failing to do so. There is also no way to default on these grounds. So, if your spouse has taken off with her lover to an undetermined location for the last two years, you can’t get an irreconcilable differences divorce.
If the paperwork for an irreconcilable difference divorce is completed and your spouse isn’t prepared for having the papers presented to him or her, numerous things can and frequently do happen:
• Your spouse may sue you for divorce.
• Your spouse may remove all the money from joint accounts, tell her relatives you are threatening him/her, and get an order of protection against you.
• Your spouse may take the kids and move to Florida.
These things happen because an irreconcilable differences divorce has no mutual mandatory injunction. These actions will also cause your lawyer to spend hours upon hours in multiple court appearances, entertaining frantic calls from you, and filing numerous documents to get you back in your house or the kids back from Florida. Your lawyer is perhaps also going to want more money than you anticipated. Frequently lawyers advertise irreconcilable differences divorces for low amounts and then refuse to perform any work unless they are paid an additional $2,000 or so as a retainer, which will cover only the most moderately-contested divorce.
Most lawyers can crank out an irreconcilable differences divorce in about two hours of work. A lightly-contested divorce can consume twenty hours of time in mediation and initial court appearances. That’s at around one hundred and fifty dollars an hour. Going to trial can take hundreds of hours.
So what happens if you get a lawyer to begin work on an irreconcilable differences basis when you shouldn’t have? Well, you’re not going to have a lawyer for very long. He or she probably states in the contract that no additional work will be performed, and the matter may not have even been filed yet. Practically, he or she will be really ticked at you for underplaying the situation and will probably not be prepared to deal with whatever your spouse throws at you.
There are several morals to this. First, be prepared to be generous. It’s going to cost you from several thousand to tens of thousands of dollars to seriously contest any issues. Second, be honest with your lawyer if you want your spouse out of the house or if it is going to take serious effort to reach an agreement with your spouse. Third, remember you can’t get an irreconcilable difference divorce in Tennessee without agreeing on all material issues in writing.
