Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainYooh
I never researched any history on marital law; but it always bothered me that in the absence of pre-nuptial agreement, family assets become common property the next minute a couple says "I do" or after some imaginary time threshold of co-habitation in sin. When people marry young with no money and start growing their family wealth together, I fully accept it, even when one spouse doesn't earn any income. But when one spouse brings significant assets into the marriage, simply giving the other 50% of those assets by default is not right. Lots of real life drama about this, obviously. Say, a young man works hard, saves on a downpayment and then starts living with a girlfriend (like the OP). How is it fair to have her eligible for half (or even all of it!) if they break up after a year of living together? From personal experience, we bought an apartment for our son when he went away to study. Soon, he met a girl there and she moved in with him. They lived together for almost a full year. If we did buy the apartment in his name, she could have asked for the half of its value (or more?). Thank G-d, we didn't, but we did discuss the pro's and con's at some point!
I would have liked to see that the right to a half of pre-marital assets of a spouse "earned" over time at some fair pace, I don't know, like 5% per year of marriage or so...
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Based on the facts you've described, the girlfriend would not get 50 % of the value. I'm assuming that a 50% interest wasn't transferred to her.
The assets one owns going into the marriage is very much taken into consideration, and usually it's 50% of the value of the increase that the other would be entitled to.