This is Nora Misenti, I’m an attorney at Holcomb Law, and a question’s been asked about how Virginia divides up marital property, what’s considered marital property, is Virginia a community property state. Virginia is not a community property state. That means that there’s no automatic 50/50 split when you’re getting divorced and you’re trying to figure out what to do with your marital assets.
A marital asset or marital property is anything that was acquired during the marriage. Whether you got it or your spouse got it, if you got it between your date of marriage and your date of separation it’s going to go in the marital property pot with some exceptions, but very few, and it doesn’t matter whose name is on the title. You could get a car in your own name, get the loan in your own name, but your spouse would have some rights to at least claim a portion of maybe any equity that’s in that vehicle.
Judges in Virginia divide up the marital estate by doing an analysis of a number of factors, so again, it’s no one size fits all, there is a list of factors the court is going to look at. Some of those are, what are the monetary and non-monetary contributions, maybe, that each spouse has made to the wellbeing of the family.
The court is going to look at how did the property make its way into your marital estate. Did one person buy it? Did you buy it with something you had before you got married? Again, a number of questions, a number of factors. It’s really, again, something that’s decided very closely on a case-by-case basis.
If you have acquired something and you’re not sure if it would be counted as marital property or separate property, if you’re going to go through a divorce and you need more information about the topic, please just reach out to us here.