Articles Posted in Separate Maintenance

As a Mississippi divorce and family law attorney, I advise my clients on both legal and non-legal issues on a daily basis. Through my professional experience and my personal interactions with married individuals, I have learned that maintaining a happy and satisfying marriage can be really challenging at times. Often, spouses will want some personal space and time alone to themselves apart from their significant other. And in extreme cases, spouses may physically separate during the marriage whereby one spouse moves out of the home and lives elsewhere. This separation between spouses could produce legal effects and consequences in Mississippi–one effect being a claim by one spouse for separate maintenance.Separate maintenance is a court-made equitable, monetary remedy awarded by Mississippi courts in the event that spouses have separated and one spouse is financially dependent on the other. Lynch v. Lynch, 616 So. 2d 294, 296 (Miss. 1993). In other words, separate maintenance is not a statutory remedy enacted by the Mississippi state legislature. Instead, it is a concept developed by the courts over time that has become a fixture in Mississippi family law. In fact, the concept of separate maintenance stems from Mississippi’s public policy recognizing a husband’s continued duty to financially support his wife and family even during periods of spousal separation–especially when the wife is the non-earning spouse and children are involved. Gray v. Gray, 484 So. 2d 1032, 1033 (Miss. 1986). The underlying purpose behind this duty is “to provide, as nearly as may be possible, the same sort of normal support and maintenance for the wife . . . as she would have received in the home, if the parties had continued normal cohabitation . . . .” Germany v. Germany, 123 So. 3d 423, 429 (Miss. 2013). So, courts will award separate maintenance to allow the recipient spouse to maintain a standard of living that would have existed absent the spouses’ separation. In the end, Mississippi courts enforce this steadfast public policy and marital duty to support one’s spouse and family during marital separation through awards of separate maintenance.
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