Increases in Separate Property and the Evolving Marital Partnership
98 Pages Posted: 23 May 2009
Abstract
This article analyzes the treatment of increases in value of separate property early in the experience of equitable distribution in a reformed common law property state. The article focuses on the couple who consumes marital property while preserving separate property and relates that phenomenon to our understandings of the marital partnership. Part I traces the development of the principles on increases in value of separate property in the community property states to the Spanish civil law system, concentrating on what the treatment reflected about the marital partnership. Part II considers the impact of this view on the early treatment of appreciated separate property in some of the common law states, contrasting the community property and early common law treatment of appreciated separate property with later development in common law states. The article concludes that as common law states analyzed the issue of appreciated separate property, they recognized the increased expectations of the marital partnership and suggests what this different view of the marital partnership should mean in the further development of the treatment of increases in value of separate property.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation