Trial Separation Explained

A trial separation may allow the spouse who wants the divorce to experience some of the feelings of being separated without making a final decision to divorce. The main advantage of a trial separation, is that it's easily reversible. You can try it for a while, go through counseling, and then reconcile, or you can try it for a while and then proceed with divorce.

If you and your spouse separate, you can do it one of two ways: an informal separation or a formal legal separation. An informal separation is basically whatever the two of you agree for it to be. Typically, one of you would stay where the two of you were living before, and the other would move into some other quarters. You typically wouldn't make any formal property division, but you would agree (again informally) on some kind of working arrangement about possession of things like cars, the bank accounts, the credit cards, and the stereo.

A formal legal separation is more permanent, more complicated, and more expensive. It's also much less common. It's nearly as expensive as a divorce (sometimes more so, because it's less common, so you have to pay your lawyer to scratch his or her head and figure out how to do everything). And often people who get a formal legal separation wind up having to go through all the pain, time, and expense again later to get an actual divorce.