MARRIAGE

The community of acquisitions system

If no prenuptial agreement has been signed, the spouses are necessarily subject to this system, the characteristics of which are as follows :

• Each spouse keeps ownership of the assets he or she acquired before the marriage. Each spouse is the sole owner of the assets received by inheritance or by donation. These constitute the spouse’s private property.
• Incomes and property acquired during marriage, along with the spouses’ savings, belong to both of them. The same rule applies to creations during marriage (working tools). These are the « common assets » that make up the « community ».
• As a principle, debts incurred by either spouse involve common assets.

The future spouses would often be well advised to have a prenuptial agreement established by a notary so that they may either adopt another matrimonial system or stipulate specific provisions in the legal matrimonial system. Certain provisions of the prenuptial agreement can benefit to the surviving spouse. The advantage called “preciput” allows the survivor to receive a common asset free of charge : this is true for the family home, the unequal sharing clause whereby the spouse may receive more than half of the community or the usufruct of half of the goods belonging to the deceased’s estate.

The separate estate system

This system establishes a division between each spouse’s assets.

• All assets acquired before and during marriage remain the property of the person who bought them or created them. The same applies to property received by inheritance or donation.
• Each spouse is personally liable for the debts he or she contracted alone.
• Assets purchased as joint possession belong to both spouses proportionally to the shares acquired which, normally, should match the financing made by each spouse.

This system can be recommended for people practising an economically at-risk occupation or in the case of remarriage.”

The joint estate system

In contrast to the separate estate system, this one puts everything into a common fund.

All property, real or personal, acquired or received by donation or inheritance (except if there is a special contrary disposition) before or during the marriage are shared by both spouses. They are jointly liable for all debts contracted by one or the other.

Furthermore, this system can provide that all of the assets or some of the assets will be attributed to the surviving spouse. This clause is called the « attribution » clause.

This system is rarely adopted during marriage.

The system of contribution to jointly acquired property

This « mixed » system functions like the separate estate system during time of marriage and will be liquidated the same way as a community system would be. At the end of marriage – by death or by divorce-, the value of the holdings acquired ​​during marriage is divided into two equal shares : each spouse thus participates in half of the enrichment of the other. This requires delineating the evolution of the couple’s assets from the day of their wedding to the day of the marriage’s liquidation.