In Canada there is only one ground for divorce: Breakdown of the marriage. Paragraph 8 (2) of the Divorce Act states that “Breakdown of the marriage is established only if:
The spouses have lived separate and apart for at least one year immediately preceding the determination of the divorce proceeding and were living separate and apart at the commencement of the proceeding; or
The spouse against whom the divorce proceeding is brought has, since the celebration of the marriage:
committed adultery, or
treated the other spouse with physical or mental cruelty of such a kind as to render intolerable the continued cohabitation of the spouses.”
The most common way to establish a breakdown of the marriage is to prove that the spouses have lived apart (have been separated) for at least one year immediately before the divorce judgment is granted and were living separate and apart at the time the proceedings began. This is, if you are using one year of separation to establish the breakdown of the marriage you can’t begin the proceeding until after the spouses are already separated and can’t finalize it until at least one full year of separation. But you don’t have to wait a year of separation to get the proceedings started.
From time to time one of the parties wants to get the divorce without waiting the year from date of separation. This can be done if adultery or cruelty can be established. Usually raising one of these to show a breakdown of the marriage will cause more upset and aggravation than it is worth. If the other side simply decides to deny the allegation you may have converted an uncontested divorce into a contested one and it likely won’t be finalized within the year anyways. Almost all divorces begun nowadays show breakdown by one year separation.
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