Hello everyone. It’s Chris, Pritt back again with a new topic in West Virginia divorce. Today, we’re going to be talking about whether you should put your spouse, or soon to be spouse, on the property that may or may not be considered marital property.
To begin, let’s say, for example, you have a piece of property that you received by way of inheritance. Or maybe you have a piece of property that was yours before the marriage. Oftentimes this is going to happen in marriages of short duration. However, there can be instances where even in marriages of longer durations that there is a property that could be considered to be separate.
Now whether your name and that other person’s name is or is not on the piece of property is not necessarily a final determinate as to whether it’s going to be considered marital property. There’s somewhat of a process used to evaluate whether it’s going to be separate or marital property. With that being said, the number one piece of advice I can give to you with regards to that is if you are contemplating going through a divorce, or if you’re going through a rough spell, whatever you do, don’t put the property in a joint name. Now that’s not to say that it’s not necessarily going to protect the property from being considered to be marital property. However, once you do that at that point, generally speaking, unless there is a major exception such as fraud and so forth, you’re probably not going to be able to argue that that piece of property is separate property. So just be very, very careful about that.
We’ve talked in other videos about how to characterize something as marital property or non-marital property. However, if you get to the point where it’s jointly titled, which means you take that person’s name and you put their name on the deed or both of your names, at that point, it’s probably game over. That piece of property is probably going to be considered to be marital property at that point. So, if this is going to be a situation where you’re thinking about divorce or approaching divorce just be thinking about that when you’re deciding whether to put that person’s name on the property.
In many instances, if you’re getting close to filing for divorce you might be pressured to put that person’s name on the property. That’s actually a red flag you might be looking at too. For example, let’s say you’re going through a rough spell, and all of a sudden they start talking to you and trying to put some pressure on you to put their name on a piece of property. That could be a potential red flag that you need to be looking out for.
So that consists of today’s video. As always, if you have any questions feel free to give me a call at (304) 720 4412 or email me at chris@prittlaw.com.
