In Virginia, we have three separate classifications for property: separate, marital, and hybrid. How property is classified impacts how it will be divided in a divorce. Marital and separate property are clear; what is marital is divided in the divorce, and what is separate belongs to the party who separately owns it. Hybrid property, on...
Virginia Hybrid Property
As much as we often try to keep things amicable in a divorce or custody case, there are some things that are fairly well established hard and fast rules. Dividing the retirement, for example, and how to handle division of equity in the home – easy peasy. Some of the more complicated issues are usually...
In most cases, my clients have been with their husband for a number of years, accumulating a number of possessions – both consequential and inconsequential. Though we don’t often spend much time dividing the sheets and bath towels, other things, especially big ticket items like houses and cars, do occupy a fair amount of time...
A friend sent me a message the other day about divorce to ask me about her divorce. It happens all the time! She had gotten an inheritance from her grandmother, she said, and used it to buy a car and a trailer, but that her soon to be ex was keeping it hostage and she...
Lots of people are, at some point or another, the beneficiary of some kind of inheritance. For many of us, it’s not significant monetarily, but, for others, it is. In fact, for some people, it’s a tremendous amount. An inheritance can be life changing. I’ve had clients who live in a home that they inherited,...
Dividing Inheritance in Divorce You probably already know (or at least suspect) that things that you earned or purchased during the marriage are marital property, and will be divided in the divorce. For most people, that means we’re talking about dividing the big ticket items – real property (houses and land), retirement and investment accounts,...
Technically, everything should get divided in divorce. Anything, that is, that was earned, purchased or acquired during the marriage.Technically, everything should get divided in divorce. Anything, that is, that was earned, purchased or acquired during the marriage. In Virginia (as in most places, though I can’t speak for anywhere outside the Commonwealth), property is divided...
When spousal support is an issue (and it often is), there are three possible issues: first, whether spousal support should be awarded at all; second, if so, then how long should the award of spousal support be expected to continue; and, third, if so, how much spousal support should the recipient spouse expect to receive....