My question involves a marriage in the state of: New York
We are EU citizens, with Green Cards. Moved to N.Y. 12 years ago.
Have been married 20 years. My wife has always been a homemaker, has a high school diploma and has never had a paying job.
She is 45 years old and I am 50.
We have not been sleeping together for the past 5 years, and I moved to the guest bedroom 3 years ago.
Except for no intimate relations, and me sleeping in another bedroom, everything else has been pretty much a continuation of the previous situation: I bring home the paycheck, pay bills, take care of home maintenance (landscaping, fixing, etc), pay for her leased car, and she takes care of the house (cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, shopping, etc).
We have dinner at table all together, relatively peacefully, we go together shopping for groceries on weekend, vacation all together (in that case sleep in same bed without any intimate contact)
Her english is still pretty broken (she watches EU tv, reads only in her language of origin), and our child relies upon me to help him out with homework, involvement with school, sports, and almost all extra curricular activities.
She has a credit card she uses judiciously, we have a joint bank account.
We live in Westchester, I am making sub $90k gross, we own a house with a 30% mortgage, and economically I could not sustain to pay for alimony, child support, maintain 2 rented residences, and double bills, and try to save for college and retirement...
Furthermore we would like for our only 10 year old child to still attend same school district, and where we live cost of rentals is very high.
On the other hand we need to make the separation more formal, so we can at least move on with our sentimental lives.
What are your suggestions for how we should manage the next phase?
Thank you

