The division of marital property in a community property state like Texas is one of the more complicated parts of the process that divorce attorneys help their clients through.
What can make the process even more complex is when assets are commingled.
Commingled assets are those that cannot be easily or precisely divided up by divorce lawyers and their clients, as ownership ends up combined for various reasons.
Divorce law firms find that knowing the best ways to handle these assets requires careful consideration to ensure the right party is able to reclaim their legal share of what is partly personal and partly marital property.
What Are Comingled Assets?
To fully appreciate the complexity of commingled assets and how divorce attorneys must approach this situation, it is essential to understand what the term means.
Examples of commingled assets include personal property like a home owned by one spouse that is remodeled with the personal finances or professional skills of the other or a business owned by one spouse prior to marriage that is financially supported with marital funds later on.
The challenge that divorce lawyers face is dividing up assets that ahead of the marriage were personal property, but became partially community property during the marriage.
How to Divide Up Comingled Assets
In these cases, divorce law firms must classify this property as commingled during the legal division of marital property, then calculate the best distribution depending on initial ownership and contributing investments.
Dividing up commingled assets can therefore involve quite a process and may not turn out the way spouses expect it to since that investment by the second spouse has essentially turned them into a partial owner of the property in question.
Premarital Agreements Can Avoid This Problem
To prevent these kinds of issues and the complexity that divorce lawyers face in trying to fairly distribute commingled property, the state of Texas recommends premarital agreements for couples with personal assets entering into marriages.
The purpose of these agreements, when written with an experienced divorce attorney knowledgeable about commingled assets, is to explain how that property would be divided should the couple divorce and help them set some documented ownership and property division rules ahead of time.
Seek The Help of A Divorce Lawyer Familiar With Comingled Assets
Regardless, the important takeaway in either case is that commingled assets can complicate any Texas divorce.
It is important to find a divorce law firm that has good experience with issues pertaining to property division and reducing the issues that can arise when personal property ends up being partially dividable due to the commingling that can naturally happen during a marriage.