Yes. You are not required to pick one ground and stake the case on it.
Multiple Grounds Are Not Inconsistent
Allen v. Allen, 194 Ga. 591 (1942), addressed the question directly. A wife’s petition alleged both desertion and cruel treatment, and her husband argued she should have to choose.
The Georgia Supreme Court disagreed. “A petition for divorce may contain grounds both of cruel treatment and of desertion, without asserting inconsistent rights or remedies, or putting the plaintiff to an election between such grounds.”
What Actually Drives the Choice
The real question is usually not how many grounds to plead but whether to plead fault at all.
Fault grounds carry defenses that the no-fault ground does not. Under OCGA 19-5-4, no divorce shall be granted where “[t]he adultery, desertion, cruel treatment, or intoxication complained of was occasioned by the collusion of the parties,” where the complaining party consented, where “[b]oth parties are guilty of like conduct,” or where there has been “voluntary condonation and cohabitation subsequent to the acts complained of, with notice thereof.”
The statute adds that in such cases “the respondent may plead in defense the conduct of the party bringing the action and the jury may, on examination of the whole case, refuse a divorce.”
The Tradeoff
Pleading fault means proving conduct, which costs time and money and invites your own conduct into the case. Pleading that the marriage is irretrievably broken avoids all of that.
What fault may still be worth is its effect elsewhere in the case, since conduct can bear on alimony. Whether that is worth the fight is the decision to make with your attorney before the petition is filed.
Contact Us
This post is a quick overview of the law and is not intended as legal advice. Please feel free to contact our office for a consultation if you have questions about this or any other legal aspects regarding your case!