When you’re going through a divorce, one of the things you’ll need to handle is the division of your marital property. In Pennsylvania, the state has equitable distribution laws, which means that your property will be divided fairly, not necessarily equally.
The property that will be divided is called marital property. That is property that you and your spouse share. Separate property will not be divided because it belongs to either you or your spouse individually.
How do you know which assets are marital property?
The first thing to note is that marital property is anything that you or your spouse acquired during your marriage. There are exceptions, such as if you receive an inheritance, but even then, a portion could end up being shared property.
Nonmarital property is any property that you owned before your marriage. In most cases, spouses keep 100% of their nonmarital property. Of course, it can be tough to determine which assets you had before or after you got married, so commingled assets will usually become marital assets.
How can you get the most property out of your marriage?
Since there is no 50-50 requirement in Pennsylvania, you may get more or less than half of the property in your marital estate. To protect your interests, you may want to talk to your attorney about negotiating for specific assets that you want. If you and your spouse cannot come to a reasonable solution that you’re both happy with, then your attorney should be able to represent you in the courtroom. There, they can help you fight for the specific results you want, so you get the assets that you need.
