Dividing Marital Property

How your marital property should be divided fairly.

At one time, the majority of states held that property belonged to the spouse whose name was shown on the title document. Title to real estate, automobiles and other valuable property was often held by the husband in his name alone, even if the wife had contributed financially to its purchase. As a result, a divorced woman was often left with little or nothing in the way of property to call her own.

Today, the majority of states follow a practice known as equitable distribution in deciding how to divide marital property. Under this practice, courts consider the contribution of each spouse in acquiring the property. Under equitable distribution, a spouse's contribution as a homemaker and primary child care provider is considered in the same way as income from a job, or other assets used to acquire property during the marriage.

Nine states, known as community property states, consider all the property acquired during the marriage as owned equally by both husband and wife. These states are Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.

A few of these states also class some property as quasicommunity property. Basically, this is property acquired during the marriage in a non community property state by a couple that then moves to a state that follows the community property rule. The property is then treated as community property.

In both equitable distribution and community property states, some property falls outside the category of marital property. Property a person inherits is often considered separate property, as is property obtained as a gift or which belonged to a spouse before the marriage took place.