Divorce

Grounds are legally acceptable reasons for a divorce. A divorce in Alabama may be granted for any of the following reasons:

1. your spouse cheats on you (adultery);
2. your spouse has abandoned you for a period of at least one year immediately before filing for divorce;
3. your spouse is imprisoned for two years and the sentence is seven years or longer;
4. your spouse has committed a “crime against nature, whether with mankind or beast,” either before or after getting married;
5. your spouse becomes addicted to alcohol, opium, morphine, cocaine, or a similar drug after getting married;
6. the judge determines that you and your spouse are completely incompatible and can no longer live together;
7. your spouse has been confined to a mental hospital for five years in a row and, according to the director of the mental hospital, s/he is incurably insane;
8. there has been a complete breakdown of the marriage and reconciliation is impractical or pointless and not in the best interest of the spouses or the children;
9. the husband files for divorce because he did not know that the wife was pregnant at the time of the marriage and he is not the father of the child;
10. your spouse has committed an act of violence that threatens your life or health or when his/her conduct creates a reasonable fear of such violence;
11. when the wife has lived separate and apart from the husband without any financial support for a period of two years before filing for divorce and the wife has resided in Alabama during that time;¹ or
12. at the time of the marriage, your spouse was impotent, which is explained in the law as “physically and incurably incapacitated from entering into the marriage state”.²

¹ Ala. Code § 30-2-1
² Ala. Code § 30-2-1(a)(1); see Anonymous, 89 Ala. 291, 7 So. 100 (1890)