Question about permanent separation

ChristineAB said:

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? Texas

Hello, thank you for your time in reading my post and for your reply. My question is about separated spouses.

Background: you and your spouse are separated for 1 1/2 years, divorce is pending due to cost, taxes, etc., a lawyer has been retained and paper work is ready to be filed/served, child support payments commensed and custody has been taken care of, and 2 different residences are maintained, and have been for the 1 1/2 years. There is no reconciliation, and both have been leading separate lives.

Question is, in the case of a medical emergency, hospitalization, inheritance, is the spouse you no longer reside with still in charge of your medical care, making decisions, etc.? Are they still treated as the legal spouse, although all steps but the final divorce have taken place? Or how does that work in Texas?

Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

ChristineAB

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ChristineAB said:

Name of state, Texas.

Specifics to my previous post are that my husband and I separated in May 2004 after 11 years of marriage, we'd lived apart in my home on my family farm for 2 years, separate everything; bedrooms, cars, meals. We rarely saw each other even though we lived in the same house. We decided to separate and he asked that we wait to file for divorce because he had a substancial increase in his personal income and wanted to not get nipped with taxes by filing singlely. Not a problem with me, our split was amicable. He moved from our home into his own home, May 2004.

He has since undergone medical procedures, some involving radiation treatment, and operations for thyroid cancer, and from time to time, is not in the best of health. We maintain a friendship and I am the only person that is available to look after him during those times. He has one elderly uncle, that he looks after, that I drop in on from time to time, and one sister who lives 200 miles away. She has her own angle, trying to make sure we do divorce, and he leaves her his portion of the family farm, and income. The uncle owns most of it, has no children and has left his portion jointly to the two of them.

When we were first married, she didn't like me. She convinced the uncle that I was after my spouse's money. Even told me I had married "up", which pretty much severed our ties to my husband's family and began our decade of arguing and eventual separation. This family is a big believer in "blood lines" and tend to marry distant cousins (eeewww). Since I was in no way a relative, I was an otusider and treated as such by everyone. there's the rub, and this occurred 3 months after we married....divorce should have happened then, but we wanted to try, we married and wanted to give it a decent "go', but we never were able to overcome this ostracizing, and that fractured our relationship beyond repair.

The uncle changed his will to favor her, cutting my husband out of the farm in late 1993. In 2003, the uncle entered an assisted care facility, needed almost daily care, which fell to me and my husband, since we lived 10 miles away. After I took on the brunt of his care, he got to know me and found out that I too have a family farm, 10x the size of his, I didn't marry for money, and didn't have to. Suddenly, I was the next best thing to sliced bread and he wrote my husband back into his will, which angered my sister-in-law.

So, now...everyone knows we have separated and that we are going to divorce. So, the sister is working on the angle of wills again. She would have an absolute fit if she knew that within the last 2 months, he and I revised our wills, basically leaving "use and fix" of each others property to each other, and the farm returning to our families at the time of our deaths. We decided to do this, in the event that something happened to one of us, that the other person would be taken care of. We agreed that this would remain until one of us remarried, and our circumstances changed.

So, this is the background for my question, what rights do I have over his health care IF he needed something or didn't want anything done health wise. Would his sister have any grounds for suing me, or causing delays in his wishes knowing that we are separated and have been for so long?

I just wondered what say a separated spouse has over the healthcare of the other spouse. If they can override the family, in this case his sister, who would just as soon ignore him, assuming at present she's in control of his situation.

I know we need to legally put all of this down, living wills, guardianship or something, but until that time, I was wondering if the 1 1/2 years means anything.

I hope this helps. Thank you very much.

ChristineAB

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