Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Real Estate Investing w/o Spouse

You really should get your wife to sign an agreement stating that the property in Michigan is your sole and separate property. Without this, your wife may be able to claim that the property is community property.

Re: Real Estate Investing w/o Spouse

Sure. You can use segregated separate property or have your wife waive any community property interest. But, you will have to get her the benefit of independent legal counsel.

Re: Real Estate Investing w/o Spouse

Family Code section 721(a) says that with certain limitations, a married person may enter into any transaction with a third person that he or she might if unmarried. The exception of most significance is that a spouse must account to the other for uses of community property.

The next possible issue is, given that you can enter into transactions on your own, can you do it secretly? When you say "without my wife," that could have several possible meanings, the simplest is perhaps that you mean "without my wife's financial participation" or "without my wife signing papers" or "without my wife being on title." That's all permissible, subject to the community property rules. However, if you were thinking of doing this secretly, I'd advise against that; you'd probably at some point breach an obligation of openness and candor, or break a tax law on a joint return, or mishandle or misappropriate community funds.

By far your biggest hurdle will be the community property aspect. Iy you had inherited half of Bloomfield Hills or a mile of waterfront on Higgins Lake, maybe. But creating a business of any kind while married is likely to give rise to a community property interest, either because you intentionally or inadvertently invest community funds to sart or expand it, or because your working on the investment deals yourself gives you an imputed income which, like all income while married, is community income.

This is more of a family law question than a real property question, and the safest approach for you is to have a family-law attorney draw up a simple interspousal agreement handling the disclosure and community-property issues; the attorney can also address the possible issue as to whether your wife should have separate legal counsel. I would never try to do any kind of business on the sly, trying to hide its existence from my spouse.