In California, the court views parties to a marriage or domestic partnership as equal business partners, and the property (e.g. assets, debts, rights, and interests) acquired during the marriage or domestic partnership (with several notable exceptions) as equally divided in the divorce.
People often ask “but why is divorce so complicated when the court divides everything 50/50?” The answer is property characterization and valuation, which exclusive of reimbursement claims and breaches in fiduciary duties, can alone make division of the assets complicated and litigation protracted.
Depending on the complexity of the legal issues or the asset itself, we at Santucci Family Law work closely with expert CPAs (forensic accountants), business appraisers and real estate appraisers, estate planners, financial planners, and other professionals to assess the community and separate property estate and do the fact-finding necessary to structure optimal outcomes, whether that be in front of judges, mediators or opposing parties.
the difference between marital and non-marital property when we say marital property in California we call that community property so community property is any property that was acquired from the date of marriage through the date of separation and that’s going to include earnings of either spouse so that’s the property whether it be assets or debts that are going to get divided in the divorce non-marital property or non-community property we call separate property and that’s property that you brought into the marriage or anything that you earned or acquired after the date of Separation that’s not going to be divided that will be awarded 100% to the person owning the separate property
so once you’re clear on what the community or marital property is meaning you have characterized it between separate and Community you figured out the character and you’ve identify the community property that’s going to be divided in half that part is pretty simple depending on the asset but it’s more a matter of determining is this community or is this separate and what is the value of this so we know what we’re dividing if each person needs to walk away with 50% of the community we have to know what is 50% equate to in dollars and cents so depending on what the property is you might have to engage experts to help you value it you might have to engage uh accountants to help you calculate what is the property division But ultimately you’re looking to divide in half the community property for
I see a lot of high net worth divorce in Los Angeles particular to this community those cases involve maybe more complicated assets a larger amount of assets so maybe there are businesses where the business needs to be valued awarded to the person in practice with the business and a payment to the other spouse so we figuring out what is the value of the business that’s high disputed and that can be a very big difference between the two parties in their position just more complicated assets that you see more complicated assets to divide to figure out um a lot of times you can have reimbursement claims maybe they’re mixed assets maybe they’re a Community Asset with a separate property component that needs to be valued and taken out of the mix so we bring experts in accountants in to help us to guide the conversation to figure out what additional factual information do we need that’s going to be particularly important in determining what is a good Fair division of of of the assets but for a high net worth case you’re you’re going to have a more complicated expert Laden case where you need additional help figuring out how to reach a resolution.