What Are My Legal Rights to Property After Divorce in Texas?

If you’re considering a divorce here in Texas, one of your primary concerns is likely to be how property will be divided in the divorce decree. A divorce attorney in Houston can give you specific information on how all the following general principles of Texas divorce law will apply in your specific case.

What Are My Legal Rights to Property After Divorce in Texas?

In a divorce, all couples in Texas have the right to an equitable split under the law. An equitable split does not mean an equal split, however. Instead, the Texas courts apply the standard “just and write” in the split, with the goal of ensuring that both partners are in as good a financial situation as possible. To fully understand what all this means, it’s important to understand the difference between marital property and separate property and how Texas decides what marital property actually is.

What Is “Marital Property?”

Marital property is all property that either spouse acquired during the course of the marriage. Everything that you earned or bought, and everything that your spouse earned or bought, is considered to belong to both of you. There are only some very specific exceptions where property can be considered separate.

What Is “Separate Property?”

Separate property is something that can be clearly shown to belong to only one party. The most common examples here are either property that the spouse owned before the marriage, and which the spouse has not mingled in any way with marital property, and family inheritances. If one of you was injured and won a personal injury lawsuit, all the settlement of that personal injury lawsuit would also belong only to the injured party, except for whatever was given for lost wages.

Why It’s Important

Texas is so strict about community property because it can be difficult to prove that something belongs to one person and not another in many of these cases. Over the course of a marriage, it’s quite common to lose receipts and simply lose track of who bought what. The state has no interest in fights between spouses who can’t remember who purchased a bookcase or over the fact that one spouse bought a shared car, but the other spouse put money and time into maintenance, insurance, taxes, and repairs. It is all considered shared property and thus liable for division in a divorce.

Proving Separate Property

The burden lies on each spouse to prove that any property is separate to them. The assumption of the law is that all property that either of you own at the time of the divorce belongs to both of you and is marital property. The biggest complication comes when some of the property has been mingled.

How Property Can Get Mingled

Separate property can become marital property if you share that asset with your spouse or if the separate assets are used by both the spouses. One way this commonly happens is when fungible assets get put into a single account. For example, if one spouse receives an inheritance after the death of a relative, but then puts that money into a shared bank account, the inheritance becomes marital property.

Even if you don’t put an inheritance into an account, it could be considered marital property if you regularly use it for household expenses, for example, by paying off the mortgage on a home that you and your spouse both own. The same can happen if you were to use your separate property to buy something that the two of you share, such as a car.

Non-fungible assets, such as property, don’t immediately become marital property just because you share it with a spouse. So, for example, if the two of you are living in a home that one of you owned before the marriage, that home may still be separate property. However, this can be tricky, particularly if the home has appreciated significantly and it can be shown that your spouse contributed to the upkeep and care of the property throughout the marriage. The longer the marriage was, the more serious this might be. Only a divorce lawyer in a Houston can help you to fully understand all of the nuances of Texas law in this area.

How Texas Courts Divide Assets

The first and simplest way to divide up your assets is for you and your spouse to agree upon a division. This is not impossible, and particularly if you work closely with your lawyer and have an amicable relationship, you and your spouse may be able to come to a mutually agreeable compromise that allows you to stay in complete control of how your assets are divided. Your lawyer can help you ensure that this agreement is presented in a way that the court will find it acceptable.

If you and your spouse cannot come to an agreement, the court will impose an agreement upon you. As stated, they do not have to make a 50-50 split and will attempt to make an equitable division of the property that takes into account quite a number of important factors. Here’s some of what the court will consider:

Length of the Marriage

Overall, the longer the marriage was, the more assets are likely to be considered community property. A long marriage can also be important if one of the spouses was a homemaker and the other earned income. In a divorce, the courts will take into consideration that the homemaker is likely to need extra assets and support as they train to a job and reach a point of self-sufficiency where they can live a lifestyle similar to that which they had before the marriage.

Earning Capacity

The earning capacity of the spouses is not just how much money each one is making right now but also future earning potential. Future earning potential is determined by things like age, health, and where each spouse is in their career. Again, if one spouse sacrifices a career to support the other spouse’s career or to take care of the family, this will be taken into consideration and often means that more assets will be given to that spouse because their earning potential is less.

Fault

If the divorce is being filed on fault grounds, such as divorce or cruelty, this can sometimes make a difference in assets and how they are divided. In many cases, this doesn’t have a very significant impact on the division, but if one of the spouses acted particularly egregiously, this can influence the court. In addition, if one of the spouses has been deliberately wasting marital property since the divorce was declared, the court may take this into account and award more assets to the other spouse.

Future Needs

The court will also consider what each spouse is going to need in the future based on things like their age, current financial resources, and health. For example, if one spouse is the child of a relatively wealthy family and in expectation of a large inheritance, this could mean they will need less of the marriage property to support them for their future than the other spouse.

For more information and specific advice on your case, contact C.E. Schmidt & Associates, PLLC in Houston, TX for a free consultation.