Moving in together

[White Out 403]

edit: troutman has schooled me, new leg is on the way for 2020.

[The Cobra]

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...

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.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Are you sure she was entitled to half of the full value of the property? Or half of what has appreciated since she moved in? Because from what I understand, she's only entitled to half of value gain after she moves in.

So if the house was worth $400K when she moved in, but worth $500K when she moved out, she's entitled to half of $100K, not $500K. Kids would probably make it a lot more complicated though.

Yes that is what I intended to say in the post in but in addition to half of the appreciated value she was also able to get half of the amount that was paid down on the mortgage. So in your example if there was 200k left on the mortgage when the relationship started and 150k when it ended he also had to pay out 50% of the 50k that was paid down.

So to get out of the relationship in the example above would have been 75k the way he explained it.