Legal Question in Family Law in Maryland

Re: Marital Property

If you buy the car in your own name your husband

will not be able to take it away. However, it will

be considered marital property for purposes of a

marital property award. This is the amount of money

that goes to the person who takes the least out of

the marriage when you go your separate ways. It's

the courts way of adjusting the inequities between

the parties.

If you are going to finance the purchase of the car

then you probably have nothing to worry about since

the debt you take on will be marital, too. That means

your future ex will be only too happy to agree to exclude

the car from marital property calculations. In any

event, the best thing to do is work out an agreement

concerning newly aquired debts and property. It

makes things a lot eaiser going forward.

A separation agreement is really worth the money

you will spend on it.

Re: Marital Property

If you purchase a car, or anything else, your husband cannot take it from you. This is particularly true of anything which has a title, such as a car or real estate. But it will be marital property to the extent of the equity in the property (usually, when you buy a car, the value drops as soon as you drive it off the lot and you have no net asset after considering the amount of the financing). But any equity which you do have will be marital property unless the car is a gift to you or comes to you as an inheritance. Marital property has little to do with who owns the property. This is complicated and hard to understand, so bear with me. Marital property is everything acquired during your marriage (including the time after you separate, until the divorce is final) by you and your spouse, individually and together, except things acquired by one of you as a gift or inheritance from a third party. It has nothing to with who owns the property, but only with the value. The total value of marital property is used by the court as a basis for an equitable division of VALUE, not of individual items. If one of you owns a disproportionate share of the value, that one may have to pay the other one a MONETARY AWARD, a sum of money based on what the court may consider to be an unfair division of value. If one of you owns the house, the car, the gun collection, the valuable antiques, the stocks and bonds and the diamond jewelry, and the other one has an old coat and a tooth brush, the first one may have to sell some of the assets to pay a monetary award, but the court cannot transfer title or ownership of the things owned.

In most cases it is as terrible job counting up the pots and pans and all the othe assets, and placing a value on them, so the court can make the final decision. You and your husband can save a lot of money and aggravation it you can reach an agreement about the property out of court. The attorneys' fees to represent you in a battle about the property very often amount to more than the value of the property. But lawyers can be very useful in helping you to negotiate with your spouse outside of the courtroom battleground.