Wednesday, February 21, 2007

My spouse lives outside of Indiana - can I file in Indiana?

Sure, you can file in Indiana if you meet the residency requirements. The question is should you?

  • Can you afford to file a separate case in the other state for enforcing the Indiana Decree?
  • Can you afford to leave personal property to the care of the other spouse?
  • Are there children?
    • Do you need information from the other state to set support?
    • Will you have problems with visitation that will need the court to enforce the Parenting Time Order?
These are the issues I have seen. There may be others in some specific situations.

One consideration underlies these questions - a court's power ends at the state borders. The practical overtakes the legal sometimes. One can overlook the problems posed in the questions above by ignoring the limitations of the court's power to fully exert itself as it would if the parties were both Indiana's borders. Just do not expect to be happy with the results of these limits.

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