Losing the House

A recent Virginia divorce case highlights the implications of re-titling property into the names of both spouses.  In the case, the husband, while he was single, bought a house.  He later moved out of the property and converted it to a rental property.  Six years after he bought the house, he married and chose to re-title the property jointly into his and his wife’s names.  The parties later divorced, and even though the house had been purchased years before the marriage, the judge found that because the house was jointly titled it had been converted into 100% marital property.  If the husband had kept the house titled in his name only, it almost certainly would have been 100% his separate property.  You can read the case here Jackson v. Jackson.

Virginia Law Blog:  https://dklawyers.com/virginia-law-blog/