The Difference Between Separate Property & Community Property
A significant portion of the divorce process will be dedicated towards dividing the property of the marital estate. Texas is a community property state. What that means is, the court first presumes that all the property belongs to the community, that is by both spouses. It is incorrect to assume that the marital state will be divided 50-50, but rather, family courts in TX are required to make a “just and right division” of the marital assets.
What this means is that the court has discretion to make decisions that can be based upon a few factors:
- Before the court in San Antonio orders a division of the marital estate, the TX judge will first assume that all property is community property. It is then the burden of an individual spouse to establish that specific property is not community property but rather, as we say their separate property. Once an item is determined to be separate property in San Antonio, that item is no longer considered amongst the community property that will be divided.
- To establish property as being separate property in San Antonio, a spouse must show through clear and convincing evidence that the character of that property is separate. The standard of clear and convincing is heightened over the preponderance of the evidence standard, which means that the evidence used to establish the separate character of a property must be “more probable to be true than not” and not merely that trier of fact has a firm belief or conviction in its factuality. Compare that burden of proof to a preponderance of evidence standard, which states that our version of facts must merely be more likely than not to be the correct version of facts. Nevertheless, there are general guidelines that we can depend upon:
- It will be a spouse’s separate property if it was owned or acquired by a spouse before the marriage and it will be a spouse’s separate property if it was acquired by that spouse during the marriage as either a gift or inheritance. Or it will be a spouse a separate property if it was acquired during marriage but with separate property funds.
The date by which a spouse acquires the property is key. With few exceptions, anything acquired before the marriage will be considered separate property and everything acquired during the marriage will be considered community property, except for a gift or inheritance.
