Asset Division: What’s Fair?
Will my spouse get half of everything in the divorce in Oklahoma? I’m Tulsa Attorney James Wirth, and that is the question that we have today. It deals with asset division, debt division. Does the spouse have to get half of everything? The answer is no. The rule is not 50-50, although 50-50 is common. The rule is it’s gotta be an equitable division of that property. So that depends on what assets there are, what debts there are, what debts somebody’s getting, what assets somebody’s getting.
So it’s common that the court tries to divide it 50-50, but before we even get to that point, it’s not all of the assets, it’s the marital assets. So we gotta decide, is some of this property separate property that the parties owned prior to the marriage, or that were gifted to them personally, or that they inherited, and they kept that in its separate character and didn’t commingle with marital funds so that it transmutated into marital property. If it’s separate property, it goes to that party. The court doesn’t have the authority at that point to divide it, much less divide it 50-50.
Factors Affecting Asset Division
So you’re not gonna be 50-50 split if a lot of the property’s gonna be separate, so you wanna factor that in. But once the separate property’s taken care of, we go to marital property, then the court looks at what is a fair, equitable division, and the great majority of the time, the court does try to find a way to do that 50-50. Just note, it’s not required. If the court, for one reason or another, decides that it’s more fair to do something different, the court does have the authority to do that, and the Oklahoma law provides wide discretion to courts to make those determinations on what is fair.
Schedule Your Initial Strategy Session
So if you’re going through a divorce, you’re probably gonna want more specific information than that, related and tailored to you, the facts specific to your case. So if you’d like to speak with an attorney at my office, you can go online to MakeLawEasy.com or call us at (918) 879-1681 to schedule a low-cost initial strategy session.
