South Carolina SRL-DIV Defendant Instructions
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It really depends on the size of the marital estate. If the marital estate is large enough, then the court can award the house and its equity to one spouse while the other makes up for it by receiving other assets. Family court judges have a ton of discretion in making their decisions.
However, if you are considering a divorce because of emotional abuse, you can file for a fault-based divorce based on cruelty. Family Law courts take any instances of abuse very seriously, and fault-based divorces can have lasting impacts on the ?guilty? party.
South Carolina allows you to serve your spouse personally, as long as you get an ?Acceptance of Service? form signed by him or her and file it with the court. If you do not want to serve the papers personally, you can mail them by certified mail.
While the outcome of your divorce is ultimately dependent on personal circumstances, emotional abuse can affect the court's ruling. Here are some possible scenarios in which abuse impacts the final divorce settlement: Property and debt distribution.
There are five grounds for divorce in South Carolina: adultery, habitual drunkenness, physical cruelty, abandonment and no fault, which is based on the parties living separate and apart for at least one year. Mental abuse/cruelty is not a basis for divorce in South Carolina.
Under South Carolina law, to be a ground for divorce, the physical cruelty must be ?actual personal violence, or such a course of physical treatment as endangers life, limb or health, and renders cohabitation unsafe.? A single incident of assault can be sufficient physical cruelty.
In South Carolina, the ways to serve your spouse are: Delivering the documents yourself if your spouse will sign an ?Acceptance of Service? form. Any third party, such as a sheriff or a process server, who is 18 years or older can hand-deliver the divorce forms to your spouse.
South Carolina does not recognize verbal or emotional abuse as a ground for divorce. Therefore, in such a scenario, the abused spouse must actually move out of the marital residence, or convince the abusive spouse to do so, in order to seek relief from the family court.