Valuation and Division of Marital Assets

Marrieta Divorce Lawyers

When two people are married, there’s little talk about the merging of assets, sharing of debt obligations, domicile, or parental rights. All of these things are assumed to be a natural part of marriage and raising a family. For most people, until something goes wrong, marriage is solely about the union of a man and woman for traditional, romantic, and religious reasons. It’s only when the marriage comes to an end that anyone speaks, or even thinks about, the legal concerns that were once taken for granted by the two parties.

Having the Right Divorce Attorney on your Side Matters

Even with the simplest and most amicable divorces, there still needs to be a discussion of how assets will be divided, how financial obligations will be paid, who is going to keep the family pet, which person will be driving the car away from the house that he or she no longer owns, et cetera.

According to Georgia Code – Domestic Relations – Title 19, Section 19-3-9, “The separate property of each spouse shall remain the separate property of that spouse, except as provided in Chapters 5 and 6 of this title and except as otherwise provided by law.”

While this might be helpful in deciding the ownership of a wristwatch or credenza that the husband or wife owned prior to the wedding, it’s not particularly useful in deciding who has the right to the family vehicle or entertainment system that was purchased by both parties during the marriage. In many “community property” states, all assets become the property of the marital entity. However, this isn’t the case in the Peach State. Georgia has not enacted specific legislation to deal with the division of marital property. In most cases, if the divorcing spouses are unable to decide, the judge is able to make determinations as to how he or she believes that the property should be divided. The obvious problem with this is that what a judge might deem to be an equitable distribution of assets may not be satisfactory to either or both parties.

Cobb County Family Law Attorneys Guide Divorcing Couples Through the Complex Georgia Divorce Code

If you’re going through a divorce, you should contact a professional Georgia divorce attorney. However, here are some of the case law guidelines that judges use to determine the division of marital property:

• If the property was purchased with marital assets, during the course of the marriage, then its considered marital property.
• Usually, assets inherited by one of the parties are considered to be individual property.
• Gifts to either spouse (and not to the married couple) are usually considered to be individual property. However, gifts to one another are not.
• Property declared to be separate in a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement is safe from inclusion in the marital property pool.

If you have any questions about the division of assets in a divorce or any other divorce-related topics, you should contact the professional Marietta family law attorneys at Abbott and Abbott, 678-203-0178.