Texas is a community property state and by statute all property held by either or both spouses at the time of divorce is presumed to be community property and thus subject to division by the court. The court is required to divide the community property in a just and right manner.

However, Texas law also provides for the possibility of proving property as your separate property. It is well settled law that a court has no authority to award an interest in one spouse's separate property to the other spouse.

There are three specific types of separate property in Texas:

Examples of property owned prior to marriage would include if one spouse owned a home or had money in an investment account or 401(k). Gifts or inheritances include assets that were left to you in an estate or gifts made to you, such as birthday or anniversary gifts. Personal injury recovery assets are complicated (some components of the recovery are separate, some not) and you should consult with a good family law attorney if you have this issue.

Proving separate property in Texas is challenging, in part because there is a heightened burden of proof for these claims. The party claiming separate property must prove the claim by "clear and convincing" evidence. This is a significantly higher standard than the usual civil "preponderance of evidence" standard.

In cases involving separate property issues some claims are relatively easy to prove while some are extremely difficult and require a significant amount of resources. An example of an easy claim would be a piece of real estate that was owned pre-marriage and that ownership can be proven by a certified copy of the deed which predates the marriage.

A more difficult (and more common) example would be a financial account that was owned at the time of marriage and has had a large amount of transactions flowing in and out of the account since the time of marriage, including transfers of community property into the account. In complicated situations like this it is often necessary to hire a tracing expert (usually an accountant) who does an evaluation and report to trace the separate property component of the current asset.