Sex with your ex, and what it actually costs

It is one of the most common things that happens during a divorce and one of the least written about. People sleep with the person they are divorcing. They sleep with them after the decree. Nobody tells them that in a few states it can reset a year-long clock, forgive a ground they were relying on, or end an alimony award.

This page is about the consequences, not the decision. We are not here to tell you whether to. We are here so that whatever you decide, you decide it knowing what is attached to it.

The short version10 points · tap one to jump to it

1. One state answers the question outright — Of the ten states read, one had.
2. New York has a different trap, and it is worse than the clock
3. Condonation: forgiving it, sometimes forever — In states that still have fault grounds, going back to bed with a spouse after you know what they did can forgive it.
4. Is it still adultery while the divorce is pending? — Three states we read give three different answers, and all three are in statute.
5. Adultery is still a crime in some states — Rarely charged, and that is not the point — a criminal statute on the books is a fact a divorce lawyer can raise, and in some states it supports a spouse taking the Fifth in a deposition.
6. Alimony and cohabitation — including with the person paying it — So in North Carolina, sleeping with the spouse who is paying you does not by itself end the support.
7. The one that changes a child’s legal parentage — If a pregnancy happens during a pending divorce, the marital presumption is already running.
8. If you are still under one roof — Connecticut’s automatic orders, which take effect on filing and service, contain a provision most states’ do not.
9. Health, since nobody else will mention it — People coming out of long marriages generally stop using condoms years ago and do not start again.
10. What we could not verify — If there is a protective order in force, contact may violate it — including contact the protected person initiated.

In this subject 10

One state answers the question outright

We went looking for a legislature that had squarely addressed whether one night resets a separation period. Of the ten states read, one had.

N.C.G.S. § 50-6: “Isolated incidents of sexual intercourse between the parties shall not toll the statutory period required for divorce predicated on separation of one year.”

N.C.G.S. § 52-10.2: “‘Resumption of marital relations’ shall be defined as voluntary renewal of the husband and wife relationship, as shown by the totality of the circumstances. Isolated incidents of sexual intercourse between the parties shall not constitute resumption of marital relations.”

North Carolina’s test is whether you renewed the relationship, judged on everything together — not whether you slept together once.

No other state we read says anything like this. Virginia, Ohio and Maryland all require the separation to run “without interruption,” and not one of them defines an interruption. Louisiana requires it “continuously,” and article 104 extinguishes the cause of action on reconciliation. Pennsylvania defines separation as “cessation of cohabitation, whether living in the same residence or not.” New Jersey requires “different habitations.”

We read the statutes and we did not read the cases. Whether an isolated act breaks “without interruption” in Virginia, or “continuously” in Louisiana, is a question the statutes leave open and the courts have answered. We are not going to summarize a case we have not read. The full state-by-state wording is on the reconciliation page.

New York has a different trap, and it is worse than the clock

New York has no separation-in-fact ground. Its living-apart grounds run from a document — and DRL § 170(5) and (6) both require “satisfactory proof… that such plaintiff has substantially performed all the terms and conditions” of the separation decree or agreement.

That is a bigger opening than a clock. It is not only whether the six months ran; it is whether you performed the agreement. Whether resumed intimacy defeats substantial performance, no New York case we have read decides — but it is the argument, and it is available to a spouse who has changed their mind about the divorce.

Condonation: forgiving it, sometimes forever

In states that still have fault grounds, going back to bed with a spouse after you know what they did can forgive it.

• Pennsylvania, 23 Pa.C.S. § 3307(b)(2): in an adultery action it is “a good defense and a perpetual bar against the action” if the plaintiff “has admitted the defendant into conjugal society or embraces after the plaintiff knew of the fact.”
• New York, DRL § 171(2): no divorce though adultery is proved where it “has been forgiven by the plaintiff. The forgiveness may be proven, either affirmatively, or by the voluntary cohabitation of the parties with the knowledge of the fact.”
• Virginia, § 20-94: “the divorce shall not be granted, if it appear that the parties voluntarily cohabited after the knowledge of the fact” — or if it happened more than five years before suit.
• Texas, § 6.008(b): the narrowest. “Condonation is a defense to a suit for divorce only if the court finds that there is a reasonable expectation of reconciliation.” Texas also abolished recrimination and adultery as defenses in § 6.008(a).
• North Carolina: condonation cannot bar a one-year-separation divorce. It reaches alimony instead — § 50-16.3A(a): “Any act of illicit sexual behavior by either party that has been condoned by the other party shall not be considered by the court.”

Is it still adultery while the divorce is pending?

Three states we read give three different answers, and all three are in statute.

South Carolina’s provision is the one to read twice. In South Carolina, a new relationship after you separate but before you sign can cost you alimony entirely, and the statute says so in terms.

Adultery is still a crime in some states

Rarely charged, and that is not the point — a criminal statute on the books is a fact a divorce lawyer can raise, and in some states it supports a spouse taking the Fifth in a deposition.

South Carolina’s criminal definition is directly relevant to this page: it requires living together, or habitual intercourse — not a single act.

We are not giving you a count of how many states still criminalize adultery. That number appears in almost every article on this subject. We checked five statutes and could not read several others — Michigan’s legislature site failed on every route we tried — so any total we printed would be borrowed rather than checked, and we would rather print five we read than a number we did not.

Alimony and cohabitation — including with the person paying it

North Carolina: the statute defines it, and sex is neither necessary nor sufficient

§ 50-16.9(b): if the dependent spouse “remarries or engages in cohabitation, the postseparation support or alimony shall terminate.” Then the definition: “cohabitation means the act of two adults dwelling together continuously and habitually… evidenced by the voluntary mutual assumption of those marital rights, duties, and obligations which are usually manifested by married people, and which include, but are not necessarily dependent on, sexual relations.”

And § 50-16.9(a) sends the payor-payee question somewhere specific: a motion to modify or terminate support “based on a resumption of marital relations between parties who remain married to each other shall be determined pursuant to G.S. 52-10.2” — the section that excludes isolated incidents. So in North Carolina, sleeping with the spouse who is paying you does not by itself end the support.

New Jersey: and the sentence people get wrong

N.J.S.A. 2A:34-23(n): “Alimony may be suspended or terminated if the payee cohabits with another person. Cohabitation involves a mutually supportive, intimate personal relationship in which a couple has undertaken duties and privileges that are commonly associated with marriage or civil union but does not necessarily maintain a single common household.”

The statute lists seven factors — intertwined finances, shared living expenses, recognition in the couple’s social and family circle, living together and frequency of contact, sharing household chores, an enforceable promise of support, and all other relevant evidence — and then says this: “A court may not find an absence of cohabitation solely on grounds that the couple does not live together on a full-time basis.”

Keeping separate addresses is not the shield people think it is. New Jersey wrote that into the statute on purpose.

Virginia, Florida and Georgia

Virginia § 20-109: “Upon order of the court based upon clear and convincing evidence that the spouse receiving support has been habitually cohabiting with another person in a relationship analogous to a marriage for one year or more… the court shall terminate spousal support,” subject to exceptions we did not read in full and therefore will not characterize.

Florida § 61.14(1)(b): “The court must reduce or terminate an award… upon specific written findings by the court that a supportive relationship has existed between the obligee and a person who is not related to the obligee by consanguinity or affinity.” The statute’s eleven factors came back to us as a paraphrase rather than as text, so we are not quoting them.

Georgia, O.C.G.A. § 19-6-19(b) — the one people call the “live-in lover” rule, and it has teeth pointing both ways: “the voluntary cohabitation of such former spouse with a third party in a meretricious relationship shall also be grounds to modify provisions made for periodic payments of permanent alimony… the word ‘cohabitation’ means dwelling together continuously and openly in a meretricious relationship with another person, regardless of the sex of the other person. In the event the petitioner does not prevail… the petitioner shall be liable for reasonable attorney’s fees incurred by the respondent for the defense of the action.”

Read that last clause twice. Georgia is the only one of the four where bringing this motion and losing costs you the other side’s legal fees. An ex-spouse who suspects cohabitation and guesses wrong pays for the guess.

Read from the enrolled text of House Bill 221 (2005), Ga. L. 2005 p. 224, § 6, page 30, on the Georgia General Assembly’s own document service — not from a republisher. Unamended since; every session from 2001 to 2026 was searched. Read 19 September 2026.

The question we could not answer

Does resuming a relationship with the ex-spouse who is paying you affect post-divorce alimony? Florida’s provision is drafted around a person “not related to the obligee by consanguinity or affinity.” New Jersey’s is drafted around cohabiting “with another person.” Whether either reaches a rekindled relationship with the payor, no source we read resolves, and we did not read a case. While still married in North Carolina, the statute answers it. Post-divorce, anywhere, we do not know.

The one that changes a child’s legal parentage

If a pregnancy happens during a pending divorce, the marital presumption is already running.

Tex. Fam. Code § 160.204(a): a man is presumed the father if “he is married to the mother of the child and the child is born during the marriage” or “he is married to the mother of the child and the child is born before the 301st day after the date the marriage is terminated… by divorce.”

That 300-day tail is the operative financial fact. A child conceived during the marriage and born up to 300 days after the decree carries the presumption, and § 160.204(b) says it “may be rebutted only by” an adjudication or a valid denial paired with another man’s acknowledgment. It does not come off by agreement between the parents.

Does a pregnancy stop the divorce? Missouri answers it expressly and the answer is no — RSMo § 452.310 requires the petition to state “whether the wife is pregnant; however, pregnancy status shall not prevent the court from entering a judgment of dissolution.” We found no comparable provision in Texas, and an absence is not proof there is none.

If you are still under one roof

Connecticut’s automatic orders, which take effect on filing and service, contain a provision most states’ do not. Practice Book § 25-5(b)(8): “If the parties are living together on the date of service of these orders, neither party may deny the other party use of the current primary residence of the parties, whether it be owned or rented property, without order of a judicial authority.”

§ 25-5(a)(2): a party vacating the family residence “shall notify the other party… in writing, within forty-eight hours of such move, of an address where the relocated party can receive communication.”

New York’s automatic orders, by contrast, contain no residence-use provision among the restrictions we read. Do not assume your state has Connecticut’s rule. Which states have automatic orders at all.

Health, since nobody else will mention it

People coming out of long marriages generally stop using condoms years ago and do not start again. These are CDC’s own figures, from Sexually Transmitted Infections Surveillance, 2023, published September 2025. Rates are per 100,000 population.

We are deliberately not printing a trend. You will see “STI rates among older adults are up X%” everywhere. Computing that from two rows of a table would be our arithmetic, not CDC’s reported finding — and CDC prints a caveat on every one of these tables about pandemic-era data introducing “uncertainty and difficulty in interpreting” them. 2023 is also the most recent year with published age-stratified figures; the 2024 release is provisional and national-only, so any over-45 number attributed to 2024 has no CDC source behind it.

Source: CDC, STI Surveillance 2023, Tables 13, 23 and 32. Read 18 September 2026.

What we could not verify

Printed rather than quietly left out.

• Whether an isolated act breaks the separation period in Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New York or Texas. Only North Carolina answers it by statute. We read no appellate case in any state.
• Illinois entirely — 750 ILCS 5/401 could not be read; the state’s site would not serve a readable page on any route.
• Virginia § 20-91(A)(1) is now closed — the two texts differed because the clause was added in the 2026 session and Virginia updates its online Code on 1 July. Confirmed by the Commonwealth and re-read at source on 19 September 2026. Quoted above. § 20-94 is also confirmed as the section carrying the cohabitation-after-knowledge bar — it is titled “Effect of cohabitation after knowledge of adultery, sodomy or buggery; lapse of five years,” while § 20-95 is the bed-and-board grounds section.
• Georgia § 19-6-1(b) — adultery as a bar to alimony. Still unread, and the reason is worth stating exactly: the section was last amended by Ga. L. 1979, p. 466, § 6, and the General Assembly’s online archive begins with the 2001–2002 session. It is twenty-two years older than anything Georgia publishes online. Settling it needs the bound volume of 1979 Georgia Laws. § 19-6-19(b) is now closed — read from the 2005 enrolled act and quoted above.
• How many states still criminalize adultery. Five statutes read; several could not be reached. No total given.
• Whether resuming a relationship with the payor affects post-divorce alimony in Florida or New Jersey.
• Whether informal time together affects a custody schedule already in force. No statute in any state we searched addresses it, and we are not going to reason our way to a rule.
• Florida § 61.14’s eleven factors and Virginia § 20-109’s exceptions came back as paraphrase, not text, so neither is quoted.

If you can point us at a primary source for any of these, tell us. Corrections are published on the corrections page with the date and how long the error was live.

Related: Reconciliation, and what it does to a divorce · Separation · Automatic orders · Dating again

Every statute on this page was read on the state’s own legislature or courts site on 18 September 2026, except where noted. Nothing here is legal advice, and a page cannot know your facts.