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I'm looking for a word to express my thought or feeling. Say for example, I'm talking or writing about my life. Therein, I've to say about my wife ( who is yet my wife in legal terms or so & still not divorced ). Whenever I say about her, I want the reader or listener should get the feel that although she is currently my wife but she should have been divorced from me yet. So I came up to something like I can say "she is my yet wife; my yet wife told". But this is not literally correct. So, I need a word which can substitute "yet".

I'm elaborating a bit on the meaning of "yet" which I used as adjective for "wife" as in "yet wife". Say, you say someone to leave your house. After 1 hour I go and see he is still there at your house and hasn't left yet. Then I come to say you that see that person hasn't left your house yet. That's what I want to imply that she is my wife yet though she should have been divorced from me a long time back.

Can one say the right way of expressing that thought or feeling.

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    @Ravi In that case, while I don't believe there is a single-word answer in British English to convey all that meaning, I could see "my soon-to-be ex wife" indicating that a) you are currently married; b) you are not happy about it; and c) you are taking steps to end that state of affairs. I'm sure that with your clarification someone will come up with something more elegant but that's the first thing I though of.
    – Spratty
    Apr 18, 2016 at 15:29
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    If you are legally married, but you and your wife no longer consider that you have an ongoing marital enterprise, you might considered calling your legal spouse your estranged wife.
    – deadrat
    Apr 18, 2016 at 15:31
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    @Ravi, you wouldn't say "yet wife" - that's not a valid construction for what you want to say. You could say "current wife", which expresses the fact that she's your wife now, and the fact you are stressing the fact that she is your wife now would indicate to listeners you don't necessarily anticipate that situation continuing.
    – Spratty
    Apr 18, 2016 at 15:47
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    You could say, "She's my wife 'pro tem.'"
    – Elian
    Apr 18, 2016 at 16:23
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    In some cases where you use yet, I don't think the word conveys the right meaning. I'd say _ who is still my wife in legal terms or so & not yet divorced _, _she should have been divorced from me already _ and _I want to imply that she is still my wife _.
    – oerkelens
    Jul 29, 2016 at 12:45

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Do you mean that you want to say that at the time of the event you are describing, they were your wife, but she is no longer?

In which case, you would say she was your then-wife. You may then qualify that by saying 'She was my then-wife, now ex-wife'. Or, you can just say then-wife, then not qualify it as to what your current status is with her, preserving some mystery as to what happened.

A common example is 'My then-girlfriend, now wife told me that...'

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I believe the word you are looking for is fiancée

a woman engaged to be married

For a man, it would be fiancé. These words are used to describe a couple who is going to marry in the future because they have already decided to do so. Two people (boyfriend and girlfriend) who love each other are fiancé and fiancée after deciding to marry and before actually becoming husband and wife.

EDIT: I now realize that my answer was completely wrong. However, I want to own up to my mistakes by keeping my original answer here as well as a new one. There's a popular phrase for women who are about to be married called soon-to-be mrs. So you could potentially describe your wife, as of now, as soon-to-be ex-wife or soon-to-be ex since you believe that you two are going to get a divorce soon. My original post above applies to people who are about to get married, the exact opposite of what the OP was asking for (people who are about to get divorced) so I hope I clarified everything.

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    The OP is already married to this person. Fiancée is not correct.
    – Solocutor
    Apr 18, 2016 at 15:25
  • Op's question was barely readable, @danebrck answered what it thought was the question.
    – P. O.
    Jul 29, 2016 at 12:51
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    The question is about someone who is about to be divorced. A fiancée is is someone you are about to marry. To equate this displays a shocking (if possibly realistic) sarcastic view of the marital institution.
    – oerkelens
    Jul 29, 2016 at 12:51
  • @oerkelens haha quite true. I hope to not make more silly mistakes like these in the future but I wanted to keep this here to remind me to double-check before posting.
    – Chris Gong
    Jul 29, 2016 at 12:53
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It might be easier to word it as something like "she is my wife, for the time being" or "she is my wife, at least for the moment". Both of those imply that divorce may be imminent.

Depending on the situation, you could say "she is my wife, in name only", which would strongly imply a loveless relationship but not necessarily one that is likely to change soon.

I can't think of any single words for this situation that don't add an undesirable amount of ambiguity.

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