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Community
and Separate Property laws
I am sure you have heard that California is
a "community property" state. However, do you know what that
means?
Community property is all property acquired
by a married person during marriage while living in California.
Between registered domestic partners, community property is all
property acquired by either partner during the partnership while
living in California.
It doesn't matter where the real or
personal property is located. For example, a house in Texas is
community property if purchased during the marriage.
Each spouse, regardless of whether one is
the higher income earner, generally has a 50% ownership interest
in community property, with equal rights of management and
control, but subject to intra-spousal fiduciary obligations.
Not everything acquired during the marriage
is community property. There are exceptions to this rule. The
most common example is when the "source" of the money that
purchased the real or personal property is from a non-community
property source. That brings us to a discussion of separate
property.
Separate property breaks down into
different categories. The most common are:
(1) Property owned before the
marriage (although that doesn't automatically make the property
"separate"),
(2) Property acquired during the
marriage by gift or inheritance and any profits, rents or income
from such separate property.
Separate property can also include post
separation earnings, accumulations and certain personal injury
damages recoveries (depending upon when the cause of action
arose and the nature of the recovery). While there are
exceptions, separate property generally belongs solely to the
spouse who owns it.
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