Transmutation of Property
ALASKA: Miller v. Miller, 105 P.3d 1136 (Alaska 2005).
The marital home transmuted into marital property because the husband intended to give his separate interest to the marriage. Donative intent was shown by use of marital funds and the wife's efforts to maintain the property, and by the lack of any effort by the husband to preserve his separate interest. The husband also made a gift to the marital estate of a substantial gift from his mother. A presumption of gift arose when the husband placed the gifted funds into a jointly titled investment account, and the presumption was not rebutted on the facts.
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VIRGINIA: Robinson v. Robinson, 2005 WL 1263242 (Va. Ct. App. 2005).
The trial court erred by holding that the husband made a gift to the marriage when he placed his separate property into joint title. Neither the wife's contributions to the property nor the fact that she considered the property to be "theirs" was sufficient to establish a gift. The husband consistently testified that he retitled the property only for convenience, and Virginia does not follow the joint title gift presumption. Any value added by the wife's contributions would be marital, but the wife's contributions consisted solely of encouraging the husband to save and not spend his money. Since there was no evidence of the value of these contributions on the facts, the wife had not proven that any portion of the increase in value was marital property.
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OREGON: In re Marriage of Winkler, ___ Or. App. ___, 115 P.3d 948 (2005)
The trial court did not err by making an equal division of a jointly titled home and vineyard, traceable to the husband's separate property but treated as a marital asset during the marriage. The trial court did not err by refusing to divide an investment account, traceable to the husband's separate property and subject only to limited family use. The trial court properly awarded the wife $800,000 as an extraordinary division of the husband's separate property, where she needed the funds to retain her accustomed standard of living, and no spousal support was awarded.
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VIRGINIA: Fowlkes v. Fowlkes, 42 Va. App. 1, 590 S.E.2d 53 (2003).
The trial court erred by holding that the husband's separate property became marital property when it was used to pay for an addition to the parties' home, which was the wife's separate property. The husband's separate contributions were traceable, and on the facts they were not intended as a gift.
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