If you’re getting divorced, then you’re probably concerned about what’s going to happen with your property once that happens. Maryland, like many other states in the country, is a jurisdiction that has an equitable distribution statute in place. This means that any marital property that the two of you share when you divorce is divided up fairly between the two of you.
There are two types of property that you or your spouse may have.
Anything that you owned before your marriage and any assets that you may have received since walking down the aisle are generally considered separate property. This includes any gifts or inheritances, provided that you haven’t deposited them into a shared bank account or used them to pay for joint expenses.
Marital property is anything that you and your spouse have acquired since getting married. It doesn’t matter if these items have been paid directly from a personal bank account or a joint one. If you’ve used the income that you’ve made from you or your spouse’s job or joint assets to pay for these items, then they belong to both of you as marital property.
A Prince George’s County judge will generally decide what is the “fairest” way for you and your spouse to divide up your marital property if you can’t broker a deal between yourselves. This often results in husbands and wives each ending up with 50% of what they collectively owned.
Dividing up your property with your ex generally isn’t easy. This is especially the case if it means that one of you has to part ways with the marital home. An attorney can help you come up with some creative strategies that you may be able to employ in negotiating with your ex though. This may allow you two to reach a quicker out-of-court settlement in your Maryland divorce case and also leave you happier in the long term.
