124 DIVorCe wItH DeCenCY
Classifications and Allocations of Marital Property
Marriages may be made in heaven, but a lot of the details have to be worked
out here on earth.
—Anonymous
Premarital property is generally classified as separate property.
When you bring it into the marriage, it generally remains sepa-
rate property so long as you have continued to handle it in a seg-
regated fashion. For example, say you’ve got $100,000 that you
bring into the marriage and you stash it into a bank account sepa-
rately titled in your name. That account will generally remain
your separate property. However, if you used the money to buy
a house, and then put both spouses’ names on the deed, this may
serve to “transmute” that house into marital property that may
now be at least partly divisible between both the husband and
wife, regardless of who paid for it originally. If, however, you
were smart enough, or conniving enough, or cynical enough, to
have worried about the viability of your marriage from day one,
and if you kept everything in separate accounts, and kept the
house separately titled, then that initial $100,000 principal bal-
ance usually remains the property of the original owner.
Who keeps what? Now what happens when the house or the
bank account rises in value to $200,000? The $100,000 “apprecia-
tion portion” of even separately held property will often be divis-
ible to at least some extent in many jurisdictions. This is certainly
true in Hawai‘i (where such appreciation will, in fact, generally
be divided in half) and it is often true in other “equitable distri-
bution” states as well.
Inherited property received during the marriage is generally
treated similarly to property that was separately held at the outset
of the marriage. Again, the principal balance of inherited prop-
erty will go back to whomever inherited it, whereas the apprecia-
tion value may be divisible.
How Marital Property Is Divided
I don’t think I will get married again. I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and give
her a house.
—Lewis Grizzard