Many posts and comments warn, "Do not move out!" The two main reasons are:

1)It could be considered abandonment, which could set a horrible child custody schedule 2) Risk of forfeitting your residence and your equity in that residence

IANAL but I talked to ten. I knew the ins and outs and my plans started to change and shift and get better. I moved out and everything came up aces. The caveat is the housing market and interest rates were ideal.

In my case with a standard bitchy cheating ex wife, she started slapping me after I caught her in an affair with an ex con, on my dime, while I was at home trying to be a better husband by caring for an 18 month baby so my lovely wife could "get a break and hang out with friends to recover from PPD." If you're shocked, don't be. It's such a common story.

What ensued was two horrible years as I tried to salvage a family and my 450k unvested net worth.

It got to the point where I knew I had to divorce. Since my W2s are showing inflated unvested, un-capitalized RSU's, my situation was extremely risky.

My lawyer told me I can move out if I file for divorce and that will NOT constitute any abandonment of the equity in the house.

My lawyer told me if you move out she can keep the kid until there is a hearing. It could be days, weeks, or months.

My lawyer told me if that happened (it did not), send two form emails per week, without any hint of threat, malice, acrimony etc, requesting access to your child and nothing else to ex, you'll get your custody schedule at the end of the process. So your worst case scenario if you don't shit the bed is the schedule you want in 3-4 months.

In game theory, this is making the first move (moving out) and PROHIBITING her best offense - the silver bullet method. Much more difficult to deal with than a bachelor pad!! When you weigh the consequences of dv accusation versus moving out, I see a very clear winning move.

This post is getting long so I'll cut to the chase. I filed for divorce, moved out, asked and received the overnight custody schedule I wanted, and the divorce was final 18 months later. Then I got my equity check in a timely manner, flipped it into a golf course house, and this nightmare turned into the best thing that ever happened to me. This is with a selfish lying crazy ex, same as the rest of you going, "but you don't understand!"