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Buyer Beware: Are You Making It Marital?

By Eric Schulman and Joshua Jackson
August 02, 2014

Now more than ever, couples live together and share finances before marriage as a means of testing the waters of their relationship prior to making a permanent commitment. Some couples even purchase homes prior to their marriage. In some instances, one party purchases the home, titling it in his or her own name and paying for the home with his or her separate funds. In doing so, the party may believe that the property will remain separate non-marital property in the event of divorce. However, in some jurisdictions, including Illinois, unbeknownst to the purchaser, he or she may be invoking a major exception to the general rule that property one acquires before marriage is “non-marital” property.

Classification of Property By Statute

Section 503 of the Illinois Marriage and Dissolution of Marriage Act (IMDMA) creates two classifications of property ' marital and non-marital. Divorce courts in Illinois are charged with responsibility for equitably dividing marital property, but only after first classifying the property as marital or non-marital. While marital property is equitably divided between the parties by the court based upon a series of factors, each party solely retains his or her own non-marital property.

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