Marital acquest meaning

This Practice Note This Practice Note explores how the court treats non-matrimonial, or non-civil partnership, assets when deciding the pool for division, addressing their definition and the effect of acquisition before or after marriage or civil partnership, and prior to or following separation. It also examines matrimonialisation, reviews various asset classes and the situations in which they may be classed as non-matrimonial or non-civil partnership assets, such as bonuses, compensation, damages, passive growth, and the relevance of an asset’s nature and origin. Here, non-matrimonial property and matrimonial property should be read as including, respectively, non-civil partnership property and civil partnership property. In broad terms, matrimonial property comprises assets obtained by either party during the marriage other than by gift or inheritance, together with, in almost every case, the matrimonial home. Assets in this category may be described as the ‘marital acquest’. Everything else is non-matrimonial property, though such property can be drawn into the matrimonial sphere through matrimonialisation. This concept is generally only material where, after meeting both parties’...

No statute sets out what counts as a non-matrimonial asset, yet case law has long examined and refined the line between these items and property included within the marital acquest during divorce proceedings. An interest a spouse obtains during the marriage in a parent’s home can be treated as comparable to an inheritance and, for the purposes of classification in financial remedy claims and outcomes, viewed as non-matrimonial. Such an interest might indeed effectively amount to a lifetime gift or a pre-death inheritance...