Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: real estate

California applies something called the "Moore-Marsden rule" for apportioning gains in equity. The rents received (that paid the mortgage) were community property, so a large portion of the increase in equity is going to be viewed as community property. Consult a family law attorney in your locality for more.

Re: real estate

I think the Moore-Marsden formula will apply only to money put in from the time the domestic partnership was created until the time you stopped living together, and then only if the money was community funds, e.g. from wages and salaries earned by either partner during the partnership.

Therefore, under the formula, the ownership interests have possibly crept a bit closer to 50-50 than they would be based purely on the 90-10 purchase money split. Maybe in the 88-12 area.

If you hold title as joint tenants, since each joint tenant is presumed to share legal and beneficial ownership equally, your first legal task in a suit over ownership would be to establish that, despite title, you were a 90% beneficial owner from the outset based upon paying 90% of the purchase money, and that in so doing, you did not intend to make a gift of the difference to your partner. Whether you can accomplish this will depend upon the surrounding circumstances, but my hunch is that this can all be established, and the court would find that a purchase-money resulting trust came into being, in which your partner took title to 40% (90%-50%) as an involuntary trustee with you the beneficiary.

Then, the Moore-Marsden formula would be applied to find the amount of adjustment of the beneficial interests necessary due to the application of community funds, if any. This would be a very complex issue, in part because, as you say, the mortgage payments were generated by the property itself, and the income from separate property is also separate property, not community property. There may be no Moore-Marsden community interest at all!

I consider myself especially knowledgable about resulting trust issues and how they affect legal title, and I would probably be able to represent you effectively and economically (I'm in West Marin and have real-property title cases (partition, resulting trust, quiet title, etc.) all over Northern California). Please feel free to contact me for a further consultation.