It is important to know how you are married
What is the meaning of a marriage “in community of property”?
This is probably the easiest and most popular way that people get married. This means that you and your spouse’s assets and liabilities automatically merged into one joint estate upon marriage. You and your spouse are now the co-owners of the joint estate. Using simple terms: you share all your assets and all your debts. When couples are married this way, their assets are tied up in the one joint estate and when the court grants a divorce, all these assets needs to be divided – either the court decides or what normally happens is that the parties pick and choose what assets goes to which spouse beforehand and before the matter goes to court. A settlement agreement could be reached between the parties and then you may request the judge or magistrate to make that agreement an order of court.
What is the meaning of a marriage “out community of property without the accrual system”?
This entails that the spouses have divided estates (property and debts). The estate acquired prior to and during the marriage remain divided. Each spouse is liable to pay their individual creditors (debt) separately. A commonly used term to explain this is: “What’s mine is mine. What’s yours is yours.” Marriage out of community of property requires an ante nuptial contract (before the marriage is entered into). The division of property during a divorce if married this way should be easy as each party could keep what they bought and pay their own debts. In practice this is not always practical as spouses might have shared the expense of buying something big or the spouse earning the most buys goods for the common household and it would be unfair for him / her to keep that item if it was bought for both parties to share. Again, it is advisable to talk to your spouse and come to a kind of agreement in terms whereof the property should be divided that seems fair to all parties. A settlement agreement could be reached between the parties and then you may request the judge or magistrate to make that agreement an order of court even if your marriage regime states differently – remember that a settlement agreement trumps the marriage regime, with other words no matter how you are married, the settlement reached between the parties would always be adhered to.
What is the meaning of a marriage “out community of property with the accrual system”?
This entails that the spouses have their own individual estates (property and debts). Each spouse is separately liable to pay his/her individual creditors similar to that of marriage out of community of property however the accrual system will apply. The accrual system is an algorithm / formula that is used to determine how much the party whose estate with a bigger increase in value or growth during the marriage will have to pay to the party whose estate showed a smaller increase in value / growth. An ante nuptial contract (before the marriage is entered into) is also required in this regard. This could be quite tricky in practice and again a settlement agreement could be reached between the parties and then you may request the judge or magistrate to make that agreement an order of court even if you are married with the accrual system.