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For professional guidance, pay a lawyer to review your particular situation in detail. (Free consultations are worth little if any more than what is paid for them.)
I am not a Canadian lawyer. I am no immigration expert.
Otherwise . . . what is confidently known includes . . . recognizing some aspects of your situation make it complicated and forecasting the outcome of a RO examination not certain. That is, there is not a definite answer as to whether you will get RO credit for those days up to the finalization of the divorce.
If there is a problem counting these days (up to finalization of divorce), it is not likely to be about the dates you were married. That is, in assessing a claim for RO credit for these days, the decision-maker should recognize there is a valid marriage for that period of time. The question is whether you, the PR, was "
accompanying" your spouse during that period of time.
@Buletruck noted this, referring to it as a potential "
who followed whom" issue, which is about the various interpretations of "
accompanying" which can be applied in a given case.
We typically think of the applicable law as definite, one thing, but that is not how it always works. In Federal Court decisions there are at least three different versions of what "
accompanying" means, in regards to the exception for RO credit, and how it is actually applied by immigration officers and Immigration Appeal Division panels varies even more so.
I and others discuss many aspects of this, including observations based on many actual cases as reported in Federal Court decisions and IAD decisions, in a topic titled "
Who-accompanied-whom can matter for PRs living with citizen spouse abroad: UPDATE," where I say, for example, the following:
That quote is a little dated (from 2022). Even though the topic has not been updated with more recent reports of actual cases, overall we have seen little indications of changes affecting this credit.
@Buletruck also shared a link to a relevant CanII search, which includes numerous IAD decisions in actual cases interpreting what "
accompanying" means and how it applies in a wide range of situations, many of which are discussed in the other topic, and including some that involve divorces.
Quoting one (
Chan v Canada, 2021 CanLII 141637) might put things in perspective:
. . . although I accept that the Appellant was married to a Canadian citizen from June 1, 2014, to October 22, 2016, I do not find it likely that he was accompanying his spouse during the five-year period from November 9, 2015, to October 22, 2016.
[15] I acknowledge the Appellant’s testimony that he and his spouse lived together until the date their divorce was finalized on October 22, 2016, and that they did not have a separation period where they lived apart but continued to stay in the same apartment in Hong Kong until they were divorced. However, I find that the Appellant’s testimony that he and his spouse continued to live together until their divorce was finalized on October 22, 2016, does not, in fact, establish that he was “accompanying” his spouse or that he and his spouse were “ordinarily resident” until that date.
Gist of that: Even though the IAD accepted that the couple were married up to the date the divorce was finalized, and were living together, the IAD did not accept the PR got RO credit for those days because they were not days the PR was "
accompanying" the citizen-spouse. That is, they were married, living together, but did not get RO credit because the PR was not "
accompanying" their citizen spouse.
. . .
In context: There are many ways in which that case is totally unlike yours. And that IAD decision does not mean that is what other decision-makers in the immigration system will decide . . . even in quite similar circumstances, let alone very different situations. Moreover, there were some particularly salient factors in the Chan case which, first of all, likely triggered a stricter approach to the RO compliance calculation, and second, circumstances which nonetheless facilitated the positive H&C outcome allowing Chan to keep his PR status.
But it does illustrate that RO credit can be denied for a period of time prior to the date a divorce is finalized, a time period similar to what you describe.
And it illustrates that what happens in an individual case can (and, by the way, often does) vary considerably depending on various circumstances in the specific individual's case. The circumstances which can influence how it goes include the situation in which RO compliance is being calculated. You offer no hint what the situation is likely to be when Canadian immigration officials review and calculate your compliance with the RO, but how it goes can depend on what that situation is, which includes particular details such as the number of days actually spent in Canada. How it goes can also be influenced by whether it is a PR TD application? a Port-of-Entry examination? An application to renew a PR card?
Summary: there are multiple aspects of your situation which could trigger a tougher examination and approach to allowing RO credit for days outside Canada, pursuant to the exception allowed for PRs accompanying a Canadian citizen spouse. The divorce is just one. Never having settled in Canada another. There is no way to reliably forecast how Canadian immigration officials will approach a claim for the accompanying credit in your case, which in large part is because there are numerous undetermined factors that can and likely will influence how it goes, including which type of proceeding is involved.
Obviously, the sooner you make a move to Canada, to settle and stay, the better your odds of keeping PR status whether or not you get RO credit for the days prior to the divorce being finalized.
