Adultery: What must you prove if you wish to rely on this as a ground for Divorce?
- Adultery: you may obtain a Divorce by relying on the “irretrievable breakdown” of your marriage if you are able to prove that your spouse has committed adultery and that you have subsequently found it intolerable to live with him / her.
- If you wish to rely on your spouse’s adultery as a ground for Divorce, you must satisfy the following criteria:
- You must prove that your spouse has committed adultery i.e. that your spouse had consensual sexual relations with a third party.
- You must also have stopped living together with your spouse within 6 months after the adultery was discovered.
- You cannot rely on the adultery as a grounds for Divorce if you had continued to live with your spouse for more than 6 months after the adultery was discovered.
- Adultery is often difficult and expensive to prove because you must prove that your spouse had consensual sexual relations with a third party. This is why a Private Investigator may need to be engaged to obtain supporting evidence of the adultery.
- However, if you are unable to prove that your spouse had consensual sexual relations with the third party, you may alternatively prove that your spouse had committed adultery by showing that he / she had an “improper association” with a third party.
- An “improper association” may be proven by showing that the relationship between your spouse and the third party was so intimate that adultery may reasonably be assumed if there was an opportunity for it to occur, such as video footage of your spouse behaving physically, intimately or inappropriately with the third party.
