Yes, You Usually Have to Share Gifts With Your Spouse

In many situations, there is an unwritten rule that some people have a close enough relationship to you that they are entitled to a share of gifts you receive from outside parties.  Every teacher who has ever received a batch of cookies as a Christmas present from a student’s parents has shared the cookies with the other teachers in the faculty lounge.  A family pet may officially belong to one family member, but the whole family shares in affection from and care for the pet.  With spouses, the obligation for both parties in the marriage to share the material boons they receive from outside the marriage with each other is more than a matter of etiquette; it is enshrined in law.  All employment income earned by either spouse is marital property, regardless of whose name was on the pay stub; the same goes for money acquired from sources other than employment.  In other words, if a family member gives you money as a gift, the money is marital property unless you sign a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement that designates the monetary gift as separate property.  If you have received substantial monetary gifts from your relatives or your in-laws and are now getting a divorce, contact a Boca Raton divorce lawyer.

No De-Gifting, Says Divorce Court

In simpler times, a married woman received a gift of tens of thousands of dollars from her mother and deposited the money in a bank account she held jointly with her husband.  The couple saved the money and had spent little of it by the time they filed for divorce years later.  As the couple’s relationship deteriorated, the wife anticipated that the court would categorize the gift money as a marital asset and order her to divide it with her husband.  In the year before the parties filed for divorce, the wife attempted to remove her husband’s name from the bank account which contained the funds.  During the divorce case, she unsuccessfully argued that she owned the money jointly with her mother and that her husband had no claim to it.

The court was not convinced.  Gifts from your family of origin are marital property, as are gifts from almost anyone else.  The only difference is interspousal gifts, which are the separate property of the recipient spouse.  Inherited wealth, by contrast, is the separate property of the spouse who inherited it; from a legal perspective, an inheritance is not the same thing as a gift.  Disputes can arise in divorce court over inherited property, though.  If you inherit property from a family member and treat it as marital property by sharing it with your spouse, your spouse can persuade the court to treat it as marital property.  This can happen if you deposit inherited money in a marital bank account or use it to buy a house and live in it with your spouse.

Contact Schwartz | White About Dividing Gifts During Divorce

A South Florida family law attorney can help you resolve disputes over which of your property is marital.  Contact Schwartz | White in Boca Raton, Florida about your case.

Source:

scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=2999737825751933923&q=divorce+christmas&hl=en&as_sdt=4,10&as_ylo=2010&as_yhi=2020