Adultery as a Grounds for Divorce in West Virginia

In West Virginia, there are several grounds for a divorce.  These grounds include adultery, cruelty, desertion, separation, felony conviction, habitual drunkenness, addiction to the habitual use of any narcotic or dangerous drug, permanent and incurable insanity, abuse or neglect of a child of the parties or of one of the parties to the divorce, and irreconcilable differences.

In West Virginia, our statute provides that no divorce shall be granted for adultery on uncorroborated testimony or where the parties to the divorce voluntarily cohabitated after knowledge of the adultery.  The legislature also provided that divorce on adultery grounds cannot be obtained if the adultery occurred more than three years before the institution of the filing, or where the adultery was committed by the connivance of the individual filing for the divorce.

West Virginia Law prohibits the granting of a divorce on the basis of adultery if any of the following are presented and established as a defense to the case:

• The two spouses voluntarily lived together after knowing about the adultery;
• evidence of the adultery is based solely upon uncorrobrated testimony of a participant in the affair;
• the last adulterous act occurred three years before the divorce was filed;
• the spouse claiming adultery as a grounds for divorce also committed adultery within three years before filing the complaint;
• the act of adultery was committed due the party filing the divorce’s connivance; or,
• the adultery was accepted by the charging party.

If you are contemplating filing for divorce, the West Virginia attorneys at the Manchin Injury Law Group can help navigate you through this trying time.