The Case of Amaryllis and Sylvester Harper
So let’s say you have almost a thirty year marriage but your husband owned your residence before the marriage and never put it in joint names. Is that premarital property so that he gets it all and you get nothing?
This was the question the Court of Appeals of Maryland faced in Harper v. Harper, 294 Md. 54; 448 A.2d 916 (1982). On 3 November 1951, Amaryllis M. Harper married Sylvester E. Harper, who owned a piece of land before the marriage. In 1967, they built a house on the land and lived there during the marriage. The husband made all the payments on the land, built the house and paid all mortgage expenses and upkeep for the house.
The couple divorced in 1989. The house and land had appreciated considerably during the marriage and the wife wanted half of the appreciation. The husband said she was entitled to nothing. The trial court found that the lot and the house were martial property and ordered them sold and the proceeds divided equally. In reaching this conclusion, the court said:
In making a determination of ownership of real property under the applicable statutes upon granting a decree of divorce, the Court is guided by several factors including the contributions, both monetary and nonmonetary, made by each party to the well-being of the family; the value of the property interests of each spouse; the circumstances contributing to the estrangement of the parties; the duration of the marriage; the age and physical condition of the parties; and how and when the specific marital property was acquired. In this case, it is true that the Respondent provided the bulk of financial contributions toward acquiring the real property in question, however, the Complainant, as a wife and mother of some twenty-nine (29) years, made substantial nonmonetary contributions toward the marriage and the family during the time the said real property was acquired. Furthermore, this Court notes that the estrangement of the parties stemmed from the Respondent’s cruel and abusive conduct toward the Complainant resulting in a divorce a mensa for constructive desertion. The length of the marriage in this case is considerable, spanning twenty-nine years of the parties’ lives. The Court has also weighed the other factors mentioned above and concludes that the real property in question is marital property in which each spouse is entitled to a one-half share. For this reason the Court shall order a sale in lieu of partition of the said real property with an equitable distribution of the proceeds as prayed for by the Complainant.
Sounds reasonable, right? But, not so fast said the Court of Appeals. You have skipped a step here. Dividing property is a three step process in Maryland. Before you can make an equitable distribution of property, first you have to determine which property is marital property, and then you have to value it. The Court of Appeals said that his property was acquired with both non-marital (the payments before the marriage) and with marital funds (the payments after the marriage). The property was not transmuted into all marital property as a result, but was part marital and part non-marital. The respective percentages would be determined by the Source of Funds Theory, which is the subject of our next article.
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