Everything You Need to Know About Marital Properties

A model house on a table and couple writing on paper, Divorce Concept

In a divorce, it can be complicated and somewhat difficult to split retirement accounts. The root of the conflict is clear. One woman may feel like he or she has made significant personal sacrifices to improve her savings and the other wife has not taken part or helped. On the other hand, a wife may think that she doesn't value her personal or her household sacrifices, but for her support, the saving wife won't have gathered what she did. A divorce lawyer in OKC can help you with this.

Dividing pension accounts is complicated depending on the kind of pension fund and the exactness required. We will explain how pension funds are priced and split in a divorce in this blog series and include a few informative examples.

The blog series is an initial disclaimer and only covers Oklahoma law and is not meant to be legal advice of any kind.

The marital estate is a legal concept for the categorization of land used by courts. Briefly, marital property is divided equally in divorce and non-marital property is not divided. To order that all marital debts and property are equally divided, national relations courts have a broad discretion to apply the law. As you could imagine, it is vital that what is and is not a marital property is clearly defined.

What is Marital Ownership?

In Oklahoma, marital property is characterized as' all property acquired by one partner after marriage, including debts and obligations' (750 ILCS 5/503(a)). If you get married and divorced after you have been married, the property remains marital even if a title is held in only one spouse's name. These include non-physical assets such as stock options and life insurance policies. Includes pets in this definition!

If you think something acquired during the marriage should be listed as non-marital, you should prove that it falls under a permissible exception "through clear and convincing evidence." If there are questions regarding their relationship, their estate is marital. The length of the law also simplifies the process and covers partners who have fewer resources in the course.

A law book on table and a man writing on a paper

What is Not the Property of Marital?

This is where things get a bit tricky and there is a sort of exception to all exceptions. That said, some exceptions are straightforward to marital property, and there we will begin. Every property bought for a partner shall be non-marital property, as property acquired before marriage, which is inherited by "legacy or descent." The estate received in return, even if this transaction is made after marriage, is a non-marital property, inherited asset, or a property acquired prior to marriage. Obtained property is non-marital after a formal separation decision but before a complete divorce. When a prenuptial or post-nuptial agreement is agreed upon by the spouses, they may exclude property.

If one partner uses another and gets an estate of any kind in the case, this is usually non-matrimonial property. This exception, however, is a separate case: if a partner has been compelled to sue the other party for the recovery of insurance coverage, for instance, and this compensation is directly linked to marital property, the judgment award is matrimonial.

Non-Marital Debt Repayment with Marital Property

A partner can sometimes obtain property via a mortgage using completely non-marital collateral. This estate is then loaned for non-matrimony. If a marital property is used to pay back some part of the loan, the property remains non-marital, but often the repayment can be reimbursed, although it is a marital origin.

To know more about marital properties and its claims after a divorce, you can call Foshee and Yaffee Attorneys of Law to get in touch with divorce lawyers in OKC.

**Disclaimer: This content is not to be construed as legal advice nor does it establish terms of a client-attorney relationship.