Legally, emotonally, etc. What are some of the differneces/
Thanks in advance.

Speaking from personal experience, emotionally, separation is not divorce. The connection is still there.

Legally, this varies from state to state. You need to check with an attorney.

Emotionally, I think it really depends, and it depends on how long the separation goes on. In general, separation is no man's land. It's Dante's Limbo, not a great place to be.

The legal definitions in your jurisdiction will affect your emotional reaction to it as well. Here, once you have a separation agreement you are about as divorced as you can get with the exception that you need the divorce certificate to get remarried. That is, the separation agreement is the legally binding docoment that determines division of assets, custody, child support, spousal support etc. The actual divorce is obtained by walking down to city hall and filling out a form. A divorce is automatically granted if there is (a) adultery, (b) abuse, or (c) you have been separated for a year. The separated for a year bit is bogus since you can write your own SA and put whatever date you want as the date of separation (i.e. date it a year previously).

Since getting a divorce is less complicated than paying a parking ticket, people here don't really focus on it as being THE traumatic event. Instead it is the separation stage where there are all kinds of support groups etc. So probably the period from when you first decide to separate until when the SA is signed is more equivalent to the American "separation" both emotionally and legally. The SA is more like the American divorce and the divorce is like a marriage liscence to get remarried. This country is so full of separated-but-not-divorced "single" people they should have that option on forms that ask for marital status (actually they often do have separated).

Separation is a state of being married.
Divorce ends a marriage.
Separation is often a way to save a marriage.
Divorce ends the bond.
Separation keeps the married couple apart as in the case of treatment of alcoholism.
Sleeping with married but separated person is adultery.
Being separated is extremely hard on a marriage because no love units are being deposited and so the spouses fall out of love. But it can save them when in taker mode and one of them tries to turn things around.

Let’s get into some common paradoxes
If you talk to someone who is not married but living together, and there are a lot of them, and who even has kids without being married, well for them, being separated is like being divorced. They can’t understand the difference between being married and not, i.e. living together vs being married.

My wife “brock up with me”. It was a horrible ignorant seen. I had to tell her “You can’t brake up with me, we are married”. I told the OM that he was sleeping with my wife and he said, “there is no law against it”. My wife asked me to refer to OM as her boyfriend, I answered, we are still married, I am your husband, he is in adultery with you and you with me…

It is like a soap opera. The fog.