Legal Question in Family Law in California
I recieved her first set of papers I guess called discovery. they contain property lists and how she see's the ownership and divisions , banking statements and household mortgage papers. the house was bought in her name, we moved in at the same time after i removed the pest control items and got a clean pest issued for loans, I put money and materials and labor into the house in that first year ,we married a year later and each had our own business and started a third and used moneys from all three to pay bills. she did all the bills and ran them i believe through her accounts 'i put 30000 check into her account and dispersed that from there instead of my accounts so my first wife couldn't attach it. is that considered co-mingling funds? Does it make the equity in the house community property after the 9 years of marraige? I can show in bank reciets , money from me to her in all three business. her cabin bis was a trust account i now find out and should not have any co mingled funds. the third co.s checks are all through the years in and out of that account and I want to expose her misconduct to the agency who regulates that misconduct. who regulates trust accounts for the vacation cabin business?
1 Answer from Attorneys
I am not real clear on what exactly was put down on the house, when the businesses were started, etc., so I can give you a very general answer. Title does not control how a property is distributed upon divorce. If a house was purchased with a very low down, and then the marital assets paid the mortgage all those years, the best she can hope for is reimbursement for the down payment. Whatever was paid with community assets is community property. I am not real clear why your first wife would be attaching your property, but suffice it to say that anyone who helps you cheat someone else out of money is not going to have a problem doing it to you. In fact, they then have a built-in justification for doing it without guilt. Your question starts getting fuzzy about the middle when you start talking about a trust account (like an attorney account?) that I seem to understand she was treating as her own money. I don't know much about the vacation cabin business. Just be sure if you are going to report her (which I don't recommend if you really want a person out of your life and move on to a happier life) that you are not shooting yourself in the foot by failing to report it earlier, or if she dumped your funds into that account, you could have issues as well. You need to obtain an attorney to talk to about all of this in much greater issue than we can do on Law Guru.