Husbands and wives will sometimes go through the process of dividing all of their assets and debts, determine child custody and parenting time, child support, and spousal support, but agree not to end their marriage. Most often this is done for religious reasons and sometimes it is done for health insurance reasons.

Unless the health insurance rules preclude it, a spouse can keep the other spouse on their health insurance if they are legally separated, but not legally divorced.  So in an amicable split, spouses would agree to obtain a Judgment of Legal Separation, remain married in title only and keep both spouses covered on one party’s medical insurance.  This objective in staying married in name only is completely legal.

In today’s environment of skyrocketing medical costs, this is a practical approach to a very expensive problem for amicably separating spouses.  Unfortunately, the health insurance companies have caught on to this effort by some separating spouses to “fix” one spouse’s lack of health insurance problem once they agree to end their marriage.  So, if you and your spouse are interested in preserving health insurance for one party by obtaining a Legal Separation Judgment instead of a Divorce, before you do so be sure to contact the health insurance provider and find out what their rules and regulations are.  Each company addresses this issue by setting their own rules if it is not covered by legislation.

Clearly this can be a complicated problem and while we hope this gives you a basic understanding of the current position of the health insurance companies regarding keeping a party on health insurance when obtaining a Legal Separation Judgment, we believe that such complex problems require the assistance of an experienced attorney.