Legal Question in Real Estate Law in New York

Re: Can New Husband's Ex-Wife Lay Claim on My Property

If you owned the property in your name prior to the marriage, it should be free from claims by the ex-wife; except that any appreciation of the value of any separate asset may confer rights to your husband, unless you have a written agreement to the contrary (for example, either a pre-nuptial agreement or a post-nuptial agreement). If you should transfer any interest to your husband, or die and leave the home to your husband, any creditor of your husband would have the right to enforce a judgment against him with respect to such property. To prevent this, you need to have a will specifically dealing with your separate property.

With respect to assets accumulated by you during the marriage, the normal rule is that these would be considered marital assets and your husband's interest may be subject to claims from creditors.

Please note that these are general responses to your questions, and they do not constitute legal advice.

Re: Can New Husband's Ex-Wife Lay Claim on My Property

To be fair, I would have to do a more thorough statutory research on this matter, as my specialty is real estate law. However, from my experience in related real estate matters, I can tell you that anything that was in your name prior to your new marriage (and is not jointly owned by you and your new husband) can not be claimed by your husband's ex-wife at any time. New York is considered an "Equitable Distribution" state, meaning that, if you and your new husband were to get divorced, you would be entitled to any property which you owned prior to the marriage that was in your name only. Therefore, since your husband would have no right to the house that was in your name prior to the marriage, neither would his ex-wife.

However, it is important that, if you are concerned about such things, you consult a lawyer that can lay out for you the consequences of jointly owning property with your new husband. If in fact you and your husband become financially distressed, and he falls behind in payments, or the alimony/child support award is increased due to a change in circumstances (i.e. sickness of wife/child, increased need, etc.), any property jointly owned by you and your husband could have a lien attached to it by his ex-wife if the increased payments are not made.

I hope this information helps. If you would like to discuss these issues further, please do not hesitate to contact me again via e-mail so that we may talk in more depth.

Best regards,

John Galluccio