To start with, there are residency requirements that need to be met in order to file. You and your spouse must be residents of the state of New Jersey for at least the 12 months leading up to the time the divorce action is filed. If it is found out at any later point in time that such is not the case, the petition for divorce will be dismissed.The person filing for the divorce is called the “Plaintiff.” The person who answers the petition for the divorce is called the “Defendant.” Filing for divorce is not a cut and dried process, but one that needs to be taken care of in a thorough and diligent manner.The reasons for filing for divorce vary greatly from case to case, but one of the leading causes for divorce is adultery; when one spouse gets intimately involved with a person outside the marriage. One has to offer proof of this infidelity, such as pictures or eye witness statements. You would usually have to hire a private investigator to have the alleged adulterer followed to actually catch them in the act, although public hand-holding and kissing by the person accused of adultery with their extra-marital paramour can often be enough to sway a judge to see things the plaintiff’s way.Another legal ground for filing a petition for divorce is desertion. Desertion can either be one or the other of the parties walking out of the home and staying out; being out of residence for 12 months, thereby substantiating the fact that the couple has not cohabitated as man and wife for at least the preceding year’s time. Desertion can also be used as a ground to file on even if the couple is still residing in the same home with each other. This would be filing on the ground of “sexual desertion.” Sexual desertion is when one half of the marital partnership denies the other partner the comfort of sexual intercourse in the marriage for a period of 12 months.

You can file for divorce under NJ divorce laws on the ground of addiction. This is difficult to do and not common because you have to be able to prove that your spouse was totally drug and/or alcohol dependent for a minimum of 12 months prior to filing the petition for divorce.

Divorce can be filed in the state of NJ because of imprisonment. If a spouse has been imprisoned for at least 18 months after the marriage occurs, the other spouse can petition for divorce, provided the spouse who had been imprisoned has not taken up cohabitation in the marital home again.

An unusual basis for divorce, at least as far as what marriage involves is, sexually deviant conduct. For example, sexual deviant conduct would be where the husband forces the wife to perform oral sex on him or even another person outside the marriage, such as one of his friends, after she clearly told him no. It could be forcing their partner to have anal sex when that is clearly something the other strongly opposes and is extremely uncomfortable with.

One can file for divorce on the grounds of their spouse being mentally ill and institutionalized for at least 12 months following the marriage. The ground issue in this case is whether the institutionalized spouse is mentally stable enough to be an equal partner in the marriage.

Any and all of the above issues can be used as grounds to file for a divorce under NJ divorce laws. Once you have filed, you will then meet with your attorney(s) to discuss equitable distribution of the marital assets, custody issues, child support and alimony payments–which will all be greatly affected by the grounds under which the divorce petition was filed. If you cheated on your spouse and are the defendant in the divorce petition, you will likely win a child support action, but not one for alimony.

Now that you know some of the NJ divorce laws, go carefully and thoroughly forward if you feel the need to file for divorce.