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Fault Grounds for Divorce in Texas: Adultery, Cruelty, and the Rest

Reviewed by the Amicably document team · Updated August 29, 2026

Texas recognizes six fault grounds for divorce alongside the no-fault ground of insupportability: cruelty, adultery, felony conviction, abandonment, living apart for at least three years, and confinement in a mental hospital. Each one requires the filing spouse to plead specific facts and, if the other spouse disputes them, prove those facts in court, which is why most Texas divorces, contested or agreed, are filed without a fault ground at all.

The six fault grounds, defined

Texas Family Code Chapter 6 lists six fault grounds in addition to insupportability, the no-fault ground almost every agreed case uses. A spouse who wants to plead fault has to identify which ground applies and, if the case is contested, prove the specific facts that ground requires. None of them is presumed, and all of them can be disputed.

Two things apply across all six. First, none of them shortens the case: the 60-day waiting period runs from the date the petition is filed no matter which ground it states. Second, pleading a ground and proving it are different things. The petition only has to allege it, but if the other spouse contests the divorce or the ground itself, the filing spouse has to put on evidence at a hearing before the court will grant the divorce on that basis.

Cruelty and adultery: the two most cited grounds

Cruelty and adultery are the fault grounds people usually mean when they talk about proving fault in a Texas divorce, and they work differently from each other.

Cruelty covers a pattern or an act severe enough that it makes continuing the marriage insupportable. In practice, that usually means the filing spouse has to describe specific incidents and, if the ground is contested, support that account with testimony, records, or other evidence. There is no fixed checklist of qualifying behavior; a court weighs what actually happened against whether it made the marriage impossible to continue.

Adultery requires evidence that a spouse had a sexual relationship outside the marriage. That evidence can be direct or circumstantial, messages, financial records, or witness accounts, but it has to be enough to satisfy the court, not just an allegation. A spouse who suspects but cannot document adultery does not have a provable fault ground on that basis alone, even if the suspicion turns out to be accurate.

Felony conviction, abandonment, living apart, and confinement

The remaining four fault grounds are pleaded far less often, largely because each one has a specific factual threshold that has to be met before it is even available.

Felony conviction requires that a spouse actually be convicted of a felony and imprisoned for at least a year, without having been pardoned. Texas does not let a spouse establish this ground purely on their own testimony; courts want proof beyond that, typically the judgment of conviction itself, since a felony record is a matter of public record and more reliable than a spouse's account alone.

Abandonment means a spouse left with the intent to abandon the marriage and stayed away for at least a year. The intent element matters: a temporary separation, even a long one, is not automatically abandonment unless the spouse who left intended not to return.

Living apart requires that the spouses lived apart without cohabitation for at least three years, the longest threshold of any fault ground. Because it takes three years to even become available, it is rarely the reason a case gets filed when it does; by the time the threshold is met, most couples have already filed on another ground.

Confinement in a mental hospital requires that a spouse have been confined for at least three years and that recovery is unlikely, or that a relapse is probable even if the spouse were to recover. This ground is documentation-heavy by nature, since it depends on confinement records and, often, testimony about prognosis.

What proving a fault ground actually takes

Pleading a fault ground is only the first step. If the case is genuinely contested, the filing spouse has to carry it through to a hearing. In broad terms, that looks like this:

1. State the specific ground and the underlying facts in the petition, not just the ground's name.
2. Gather the evidence that ground requires: records, correspondence, witness testimony, or, for a felony-conviction ground, the judgment of conviction itself.
3. Notify the other spouse of the petition and the ground it states, since a contested fault ground cannot be finalized on an agreed prove-up alone.
4. If the other spouse disputes the ground, present the evidence at a contested hearing before the court will grant the divorce on that basis.

None of this changes the minimum timeline. The 60-day waiting period applies to every Texas divorce regardless of the ground stated in the petition, so pleading fault does not make a case move faster, and disputing a fault ground can make it move considerably slower. See how to file for divorce in Texas for the filing steps that apply no matter which ground the petition states.

1. Day 0Petition is filed stating the specific fault ground and the facts supporting it.
2. Day 0-60Evidence is gathered, and if the other spouse disputes the ground, the case moves toward a contested hearing rather than a straightforward prove-up.
3. Contested hearingThe filing spouse presents evidence, and the court decides whether the divorce is granted on that ground before the decree can be finalized.
4. Day 60Earliest date a Texas court may sign a divorce decree, on a fault ground or on insupportability alike.

Fault and property division: what changes and what does not

A Texas court divides the community estate in a manner it finds just and right, which is not an automatic even split, and fault is one of the factors a court may weigh in deciding what that division looks like. A finding of cruelty or adultery can support an unequal division in the other spouse's favor, but it is one factor among several, including earning capacity, health, and which spouse has conservatorship of the children, not a fixed penalty with a set percentage.

That last point matters even in a fault-ground case: proving cruelty or adultery can shift how the community estate gets split, but it does not turn separate property into something a court can redistribute. See community property in Texas for how the just-and-right standard works outside of fault.

Choosing a ground for your own case

Because fault grounds add a proof requirement that insupportability does not, most Texas divorces, including the overwhelming majority of agreed cases, are filed on insupportability regardless of what actually happened in the marriage. Choosing insupportability does not concede that nothing went wrong; it simply means neither spouse has to establish blame to get the divorce granted. A spouse can still choose a fault ground for reasons that have nothing to do with speed, wanting the record to reflect what happened, or believing it will affect property division. But for a couple that agrees on ending the marriage and wants to avoid litigating who caused it, insupportability remains the ground nearly every agreed Texas divorce uses. See insupportability, Texas's no-fault ground for how that path works in more detail.

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