It’s All about Timing
Video Transcribed: Hello everybody, this is Oklahoma lawyer Dustin Peterson. Today we’re going to be talking about equitable property division. We’ll probably have several segments on this, so we’ll just go through some specific questions that I have received and see if we can’t solve some puzzles.
In this particular case, I’ll give you the situation. We have a couple that was married. The wife then moved into a home that the husband already owned. They lived there as a married couple for several years and then they separated. In fact, they were separated for about 10 years before the wife eventually filed a petition for divorce.
Now during this 10-year separation period, however, it was the wife that was living in the home, not the husband. Yet the husband was still paying the mortgage and all the utilities on the house. So at the time of the divorce, what happens to the house?
Well, we have to look at, because there was such a long period between the separation and the divorce filing, we have to look at where the joint industry ceases. So in other words, we’re not going to look at, well, the petition for divorce was filed here and we’re just going to take the value at the time of the filing for divorce minus the value of the home when they were married and simply divide that by two. It’s going to be shorter than that.
It’s going to be when the joint industry ceased. So because the husband left the house 10 years before the divorce was filed, it’s likely that the court will determine that joint industry, as far as the marriage is concerned, ceased at that point. So we’re going to take 10 years earlier the value of the house. We’re going to less the value of the home at the time of the marriage from that. And we will get a net increase in value during the joint industry period. And that is likely the amount that is subject to equitable division. Maybe a 50-50. Who knows? That’s up to the judge to decide based on any number of other factors. But probably 50-50.
So if you have any questions about equitable property division as it concerns your home, give me, a divorce attorney in OKC, a call at 405-888-5400 or look me up online at theoklahomacityattorney.com.
