Grounds Assessment
A candid evaluation of your facts against the Article 55 grounds and the five-year prescriptive period — including whether nullity, annulment, or another remedy serves you better.
Family Law
When living together has become impossible but ending the marriage bond is not the remedy you need — or the one the law allows — legal separation protects your person, your children, and your property.
Overview
Legal separation is a court decree that authorizes the spouses to live separately and dissolves their property regime, without dissolving the marriage itself. Article 55 of the Family Code allows it only on grave grounds: repeated physical violence or grossly abusive conduct against the petitioner, a common child, or a child of the petitioner; physical violence or moral pressure to compel a change of religious or political affiliation; an attempt to corrupt or induce the petitioner or a child to engage in prostitution; final conviction with imprisonment of more than six years; drug addiction or habitual alcoholism; homosexuality or lesbianism; contracting a subsequent bigamous marriage; sexual infidelity or perversion; an attempt on the life of the petitioner; and abandonment without justifiable cause for more than one year.
The effects are substantial even though the bond remains. The absolute community or conjugal partnership is dissolved and liquidated, and the offending spouse's share in the net profits may be forfeited in favor of the common children or the innocent spouse. But because neither spouse may remarry, legal separation is a different remedy from annulment or declaration of nullity, which end the marriage itself — choosing correctly at the outset is the single most important decision in these cases.
The action also runs on strict clocks: the petition must be filed within five years from the occurrence of the cause, and the court observes a six-month cooling-off period before trial to give reconciliation a chance. As part of our family law practice, we help you weigh these constraints honestly — and where violence is involved, we pair the petition with protection orders so you are safe while the case proceeds.
Scope of Work
A candid evaluation of your facts against the Article 55 grounds and the five-year prescriptive period — including whether nullity, annulment, or another remedy serves you better.
Preparation and filing of the verified petition before the Family Court, and representation through the cooling-off period, pre-trial, and trial.
Protection orders, support pendente lite, and interim custody arrangements while the case is pending — especially where violence or abandonment is involved.
Liquidation of the absolute community or conjugal partnership, and enforcement of the forfeiture of the guilty spouse's share in the net profits where the law provides.
Custody of the minor children — which the decree generally awards to the innocent spouse, subject to the best interest of the child — and the fixing and enforcement of support.
Where the spouses reconcile, we handle the joint manifestation terminating the case or setting aside the decree, and any agreement to revive the former property regime.
Common Questions
No. Legal separation entitles the spouses to live separately and dissolves their property regime, but the marriage bond remains intact — neither spouse may remarry. If the capacity to remarry is what you need, the proper remedies are a declaration of nullity, an annulment, or, where a foreign divorce is involved, judicial recognition of that divorce.
Legal separation fits when there is grave marital fault — such as repeated violence, infidelity, abandonment, or addiction — and what you need is protection, financial separation, and formal recognition of the wrong, but you do not need or want the marriage itself declared void or annulled. It is also the available remedy when the marriage was validly celebrated and no ground for nullity or annulment exists. Note that the petition must be filed within five years from the occurrence of the cause.
Not by conversion. Legal separation and annulment or nullity are distinct actions with different grounds, so a legal separation decree does not ripen into a decree ending the marriage. If facts exist that would make the marriage void or voidable — psychological incapacity, for example — a separate petition for nullity or annulment must be filed, and a lawyer can assess whether your evidence supports that stronger remedy from the start.
The decree dissolves and liquidates the absolute community or conjugal partnership. The offending spouse forfeits his or her share of the net profits of the regime in favor of the common children, or in default of children, the innocent spouse, and the guilty spouse is disqualified from inheriting from the innocent spouse by intestate succession. The innocent spouse may also revoke donations made to the offending spouse and designations of that spouse as insurance beneficiary.
Yes — the law encourages it, which is why the court cannot try a legal separation case within six months from the filing of the petition, a cooling-off period meant to allow reconciliation. If the spouses reconcile, a pending case is terminated, and if a decree has already been issued, it is set aside upon the filing of a joint manifestation in court. The separation of property generally subsists unless the spouses agree to revive their former regime.
Work With Us
Reach us via Call, Viber, or WhatsApp at 0917-187-1951. We will tell you candidly whether legal separation — or a different remedy — fits your case.
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