Legal Question in Family Law in Washington

It depends. If she was single when this personal injury award was completed, then this award would be her separate property. If this award is separate property, then it will continue to have this characterization as long as she keeps it out of her marital community. She has to be careful to not commingle this separate asset, the personal injury annuity funds, with her marital community. Commingling can occur if she deposits those annuity proceeds into a bank account that has both her and her spouse's/husband's name on it, or if she establishes a new bank account and puts both her and her spouse's/husband's name on that new account. If she deliberately or inadvertently commingles those annuity funds or proceeds, then her spouse/husband will have an ownership interest in such funds. If any dispute ever arose over the separate vs. community status of those funds, there is a legal concept where she could prove the separate character of those funds by using the tracing rule for those funds to show they came from a separate source that originally was in her name only before marriage. It is important to remember that in Washington State, the presumption, which is rebuttable, is that all property acquired during marriage is community property with some exceptions. Those exceptions generally are as follows: 1) property acquired before marriage and not commingled after marriage; 2) property acquired under a will; 3) property acquired under intestate succession, i.e., as an heir where there is no will; and, 4) property acquired as a gift given solely in the name of the married person and not subsequently commingled. So, as long as your daughter keeps those funds separate and in her name only and under her tax identification number only, she will retain sole ownership of those annuity funds. Good Luck!