Your relatives may have never gotten divorced, but may have agreed to live separately. That separate maintenance agreement may have been the result of a court action between two spouses who were not getting along, but did not want to get divorced either.

These cases may provide just as much genealogical information as an actual divorce case–the date and place of marriage, areas where the family lived, etc. If a case for separate maintenance is filed, it would a local court record. Those records would be public records.

Separate maintenance cases are like divorces in that families do not often pass those stories down to the present generation. Do not assume a couple was not divorced or filed a case for separate maintenance just because you have never heard a story about it.

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