Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Virginia

Re: Name not on Deed

You likely have a viable marital claim to this property deriving from your 16 years of marriage to your husband. However, your claim would be considerably enhanced if your incarerated husband would properly execute a deed of gift adding your name to the deed as an equal co-owner of record of this particular property.

Re: Name not on Deed

I am not a family relations divorce lawyer and the best I can do is tell you where you need to be very careful and get some precise legal advice on the question.

I would say that your rights to the property are precarious. (I am assuming that he owned it before you were married the way you put it.)

Presumptively, the property belongs to your husband ALONE, and you have NO rights to the property.

Virginia recognizes the concept of both separate property and marital property. Property can be either. So if your husband owned the property before marriage, it would remain his separate, personal property.

However, separate property can be transformed into marital property if it is treated as marital property or co-mingled with marital property.

If your income contributed to pay the mortgage for 16 years, and/or you helped improve the real estate, it might be changed into marital property, regardless of what the deed says.

But that's something that is not automatic. You would have to prove that. And even then you might not be given 50-50.

So if you are still on good terms with your husband, you should work out a plan of what should be done, and hopefully have him sign a new deed (from him alone to both of you together). Actually, this makes it harder for any creditors to go after the house, if you add "tenancy by the entirities."

Usually if someone is incarcerated, they need your help and cooperation to visit them and support them and help them with things on the outside. So hopefully you are not in a completely vulnerable position.

By the way, you might want to have someone check whether his prosecution is invalid and can be attacked.