Contested divorces traditionally involve situations where the parties cannot agree on some major point such as property division, alimony, custody, child support, or attorney's fees and there are grounds for the divorce other than irreconcilable differences. In Georgia, the grounds for divorce are:

• Intermarriage by persons within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity or affinity
• Mental incapacity at the time of the marriage
• Impotency at the time of marriage
• Force, menace, duress, or fraud in obtaining the marriage
• Pregnancy of the wife by a man other than the husband, at the time of the marriage, unknown to the husband
• Adultery in either of the parties after marriage
• Willful and continued desertion by either of the parties for the term of one year
• The conviction of either party for an offense involving moral turpitude, under which he is sentenced to imprisonment in a penal institution for a term of two years or longer
• Habitual intoxication
• Cruel treatment, which shall consist of the willful infliction of pain, bodily or mental, upon the complaining party, such as reasonably justifies apprehension of danger to life, limb, or health
• Incurable mental illness
• Habitual drug addiction, which shall consist of addiction to any controlled substance as defined in Article 2 of Chapter 13 of Title 16, and
• The marriage is irretrievably broken