ohiolandlord
11-22-2006, 09:06 PM
A. Distinction Between Separate Property and Marital Property
To understand what makes an antenuptial agreement useful, you must first understand the distinction between marital and separate property.
1. Separate Property
When two people get engaged, they each own separate property. For instance, before marriage, Harry owns a motorcycle and 100 shares of Walt Disney stock at $30.00 per share. Wilma owns a home at 123 East Main Street and a 1965 Ford Mustang sitting in a barn with no engine. These items would be separate property for each of them. Once they get married, their separate property maintains its character as separate property.
2. Marital Property
But let's assume Harold gets a job paying $100,000.00 per year after the marriage, or keeps his $100,000.00 per year job after the marriage ceremony. Though Wilma does not help him in his job, but rather is a stay at home wife, any money that Harold makes from his active efforts at the job is marital property.
This means that half of Harold's income is the property of Wilma. This may seem unfair, but courts have the strange idea that a marriage is a partnership venture, and that the time one spouse spends away from another to earn a living for the two of them hurts the spouse left behind because that spouse is deprived of the other's company and companionship. Thus it is only fair to compensate the spouse left behind by considering the money as joint property.
Thus when a man sends his wife out in the world to work and lies prostrate upon the couch all day watching cable TV, drinking beer, and wishing it were an autumn Saturday so college football would come on, the law entitles him to one half of whatever his wife earns. The same situation obtains when the wife rises as the crack of noon and watches her soap operas all day while eating bon bons and complaining that her husband did not make the beds or unload the dishwasher.
Let's get back to Harold and Wilma. If they purchase a Toyota Camry so that Harold does not have to freeze his balls off in the winter driving to work on his motorcycle, and if they use the money from Harold's job earnings paid after the marriage ceremony to do so, then that Toyota Camry is marital property.
If the marriage of Harold and Wilma ends up on the rocks and in a divorce court, the fact that the Toyota Camry is titled in Harold's name won't make the slightest difference to the judge. If the judge finds that it was purchased during the marriage using marital funds, then it is marital property and must be divided (or more likely, the spouse not receiving the car will get an offset of other property of similar value to even things out).
This brings us to a point that bears repeating. A divorce court is not bound by whose name the asset is in. Husbands who are pleased to think themselves clever by putting everything in their name thinking this means their wives will get nothing upon divorce are in for a surprise. An asset is either marital property or it is separate property, and that is determined by the divorce court, not the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the County Recorder's Office or Bank Records.
for more information visit - www.ohioprenuptial.com
To understand what makes an antenuptial agreement useful, you must first understand the distinction between marital and separate property.
1. Separate Property
When two people get engaged, they each own separate property. For instance, before marriage, Harry owns a motorcycle and 100 shares of Walt Disney stock at $30.00 per share. Wilma owns a home at 123 East Main Street and a 1965 Ford Mustang sitting in a barn with no engine. These items would be separate property for each of them. Once they get married, their separate property maintains its character as separate property.
2. Marital Property
But let's assume Harold gets a job paying $100,000.00 per year after the marriage, or keeps his $100,000.00 per year job after the marriage ceremony. Though Wilma does not help him in his job, but rather is a stay at home wife, any money that Harold makes from his active efforts at the job is marital property.
This means that half of Harold's income is the property of Wilma. This may seem unfair, but courts have the strange idea that a marriage is a partnership venture, and that the time one spouse spends away from another to earn a living for the two of them hurts the spouse left behind because that spouse is deprived of the other's company and companionship. Thus it is only fair to compensate the spouse left behind by considering the money as joint property.
Thus when a man sends his wife out in the world to work and lies prostrate upon the couch all day watching cable TV, drinking beer, and wishing it were an autumn Saturday so college football would come on, the law entitles him to one half of whatever his wife earns. The same situation obtains when the wife rises as the crack of noon and watches her soap operas all day while eating bon bons and complaining that her husband did not make the beds or unload the dishwasher.
Let's get back to Harold and Wilma. If they purchase a Toyota Camry so that Harold does not have to freeze his balls off in the winter driving to work on his motorcycle, and if they use the money from Harold's job earnings paid after the marriage ceremony to do so, then that Toyota Camry is marital property.
If the marriage of Harold and Wilma ends up on the rocks and in a divorce court, the fact that the Toyota Camry is titled in Harold's name won't make the slightest difference to the judge. If the judge finds that it was purchased during the marriage using marital funds, then it is marital property and must be divided (or more likely, the spouse not receiving the car will get an offset of other property of similar value to even things out).
This brings us to a point that bears repeating. A divorce court is not bound by whose name the asset is in. Husbands who are pleased to think themselves clever by putting everything in their name thinking this means their wives will get nothing upon divorce are in for a surprise. An asset is either marital property or it is separate property, and that is determined by the divorce court, not the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles or the County Recorder's Office or Bank Records.
for more information visit - www.ohioprenuptial.com