cobra or still legally insured?

[onafone]

What is the name of your state? IL

on 6/2/05, my husband and i went to trial re: our divorce. it was decided that the actual filing would not be entered until 7/8/05 to give me time to find medical coverage for myself and son (his step son). i am self employed and my son is 17 and a student. after reviewing policies, i determined that COBRA would be my best bet. on 7/8/05, the date of the filing, my attorney did not file the papers as anticpiated; he had not received the final draft of the divorce from my husbands attorney (my husband was the plaintiff but my attorney volunteered to file the papers as his attorney is in another county) and since he did not have sufficiant time to review the decree, he was not comfortable in filing it yet. he reset the date for 8/4/05; mean time, my husbands HR dept called the insurance company and cancelled our coverage effective 7/8/05 without verification of the filing. I was told by the insurance co and my attorney that we need to be reinstated until the actual divorce decree is filed; the HR dept says that since we had agreed that 7/8/05 was the date of coverage termination, even though we are still legally married, we can be taken off his coverage and go on COBRA as of 7/8/05. i personally dont care if we are covered by my spouse or COBRA. my concern is that i CAN legally be covered by COBRA thru my spouses insurance even though we are not legally divorced yet. in other words, can a change of life status be effective based on an agreed upon date or does it have to be the actual filing date?

*side note: i asked the HR mgr why a simple verification of the filing was not done before calling in a change of life status and she indicated that in the 8 yrs she has worked for the company and many more in HR, she has never had a divorce filing delayed and that "verification of information given to us by the employee is not part of the process and I am not going to change my process of doing things unless I see proof that their information in incorrect."