Marital Property Is Your Property
Video Transcribed: Can I give away marital property in Oklahoma? I’m Tulsa attorney, James Wirth, and that’s a question that we have is can I give away marital property? Generally speaking, marital property is your property.
If you are married and that is the property of the marriage, then either spouse has an equal right to it. It is marital to where they can spend it, give it away however they wish. However, that changes at the point that divorce is filing, which I assume is what this question is talking about.
If somebody files a Petition for Dissolution of Marriage, a Divorce Petition, in Oklahoma, you serve that on the other side and, by statute, that summons that you serve also includes Notice of an Automatic Temporary Injunction.
And when that’s served on the other side, that Automatic Temporary Injunction goes into place, and it says everything needs to be done pursuant to the normal course of business.
And it has a whole list of things that you cannot do that’s outside the normal course of business, as part of that would be dissipating marital assets. If that’s not part of what you would normally do in the business of the marriage, giving away properties, creating, hiding assets, then you can’t do it once you’re served with that ATI.
The question is, can I give away marital property? Well, just during your marriage, generally speaking, yeah. That’s your property. It’s your spouse’s property. You can give it away.
Once the divorce petition is filed and served, you cannot give it away unless you have a court order that allows you to do so or both parties sign a waiver to the Automatic Temporary Injunction.
If you’ve got questions about your specific circumstances though, don’t take this general information. Talk to an attorney confidentially about that. To get that scheduled with somebody at my office, you can go online to makelaweasy.com.
