Moving back in together normally cancels a Georgia spouse’s obligation to pay permanent alimony. It does not if the spouse who moved back in never meant it.
The Rule
Hill v. Guest, 216 Ga. 679 (1961), states the exception. “While, under [OCGA 19-6-12], a voluntary cohabitation of the parties will annul a prior agreement for alimony, the reconciliation and cohabitation relied upon by the husband must have been entered into by him in good faith and not as a scheme merely to avoid payment of alimony.”
What That Looked Like
In Hill, a husband who had been seeing another woman settled with his wife in July 1957, deeding her real property. In September he told her he was sorry and through with all of it, and she took him back. Three weeks later he drew $9,000 out of a South Carolina bank account she did not know about, left, moved into the same boarding house as the other woman, and sued for divorce.
After his wife died, he sued her estate for the property, arguing those three weeks had annulled the settlement. A jury found against him and the Georgia Supreme Court affirmed. The trial judge had charged the jury that a husband who induces his wife to return by promising to reform, without intending to keep the promise, “committed a fraud on his wife,” and that the reconciliation “would not annul a separation agreement executed before the reconciliation.”
It Is a Question of Fact
Whether a reconciliation was genuine is for the trier of fact. In Koby v. Koby, 277 Ga. 160 (2003), a wife claimed the parties had reconciled while her divorce case was pending. The evidence conflicted, the trial court “specifically found that there was not a bona fide reconciliation,” and the Georgia Supreme Court found ample evidence supporting that conclusion.
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