Family Law

Equitable Division of Marital and Non-Marital Assets and Debts

By Ben Stevens

One of the newer family law blogs is the Florida Family Lawyer Blog, which is published by Koch & Trushin, P.A. in the Miami area.  The articles published on their blog appear to be very well written, and it's great to have yet another quality resource available on the web.

One of their recent posts dealt with the issue of how marital and non-marital assets and debts are handled during a divorce.  South Carolina and Florida both use a form of equitable distribution, and although there are some differences between our respective states, their article provides a good analysis of what are / aren't marital assets and debts, which included the following excerpts:

Martial assets and liabilities include: (1) assets and liabilities incurred during marriage, either individually or both spouses; (2) increased value and appreciation of non-martial assets due to the efforts of either party during the marriage or because marital funds contributed to that increased value; (3) gifts one spouse gives to the other during that marriage; and (4) all vested and non-vested benefits, rights, and funds that came due during the marriage (including retirement, pension, profit-sharing, annuity, deferred compensation, and insurance plans). It is also presumed that all real and personal property held as tenants by the entirety is marital, regardless of whether the property was purchased before or during marriage.

Nonmarital assets and liabilities include the following: (1) assets and liabilities incurred before you got married; (2) assets acquired individually by either spouse by non-interspousal gift, bequest, devise, or descent, or any exchange for these assets; (3) all income received from non-marital assets during the marriage unless that income was used or relied on by the spouses as a marital asset; (4) assets excluded based on a valid written agreement made by the parties (think: pre-nuptial agreement!); and (5) liabilities incurred by one spouse as a result of the other’s forgery or unauthorized signature of that spouse’s name.

Source:  "Equitable Distribution – What Are My Martial Assets?" by Douglas Schapiro, published at the Florida Family Lawyer Blog.

Full post as published by SC Family Law Blog on October 13, 2008 (boomark / email).