Dividing Property in a Nevada Divorce?

Getting divorced? In Nevada? Do you know what property you get to keep and what you have to split with your spouse? Who will be responsible for the debts you and your spouse incurred during the marriage--or before?

Nevada is a community property state. All income earned and property acquired by either spouse during the marriage is community property. That means it belongs to both spouses equally, so it must be split equally between the spouses at divorce. As well, all debts incurred during the marriage are considered community debts and both spouses are equally responsible for them.

With a written separation agreement, if you and your spouse agree that you don’t want to split the community property equally, then the two of you can decide what’s fair. If you can't, or if there are certain assets in dispute, then you can still get the unequal division you prefer, or close to it, if you convince the court that there is a compelling, equitable reason for doing so.

Before a court can divide community property, the court must distinguish it from any separate property that you may own independently. Generally, separate property is property you owned before marriage. It may also include property you acquired during marriage, such as gifts, inheritances, or personal-injury awards. As well, any profit or rent you receive from your separate property remains yours alone. Although the court excludes your separate property at division, it must presume that all property you acquired during marriage is community property. To keep something you gained during marriage out of the property division, you need to give the court clear and convincing proof that it was yours before marriage, or was a gift intended only for you, or one of the other justifications that characterize property as separate. Even where you prove that an asset is separate, however, the court might set it aside to pay for alimony, child support, or a community debt.

Real property like a home, personal property like jewelry, and intangible property like income, dividends, and benefits are commonly divided at divorce. Liabilities, or debts, must also be divided or assigned to one spouse or the other. Like other property, before dividing a debt, the court has to decide if it is community or separate based on when it was acquired, who acquired it, and how it was used. Then a court will apply the factors below to assign responsibility for it.

Starting with equal division, the court can shift property rights from one spouse to the other based on the circumstances of the marriage. You may get more of the community property, if you have custody of the children and have fewer financial resources than your spouse because you were the homemaker during marriage. But, if you or your spouse had an affair or otherwise caused the marriage to fail, courts will not increase your share of community property. The law does allow the court to distribute the community property unevenly based on compelling reasons, but those reasons tend to be economic rather than moral; they aren't based on fault.

If the divorce will make it difficult for you to maintain the standard of living you had during marriage, you might be entitled to alimony. Alimony is not designed to punish a spouse, so no consideration of fault enters the analysis. Alimony may help bridge some of the financial gap if you contributed unpaid work during marriage, or even if you brought monetary resources to the marriage and your age, health, ability to work, or some other factor leaves you unfairly disadvantaged at divorce.

Note that, the determination of alimony is not part of the property-division process. Amount and duration of payments depends on factors such as age and health, as well as how you contributed to the marriage – including the contribution of a homemaker – and what the obligations are after divorce.

Because an award for alimony must be just and equitable, a court can’t ignore the spouse’s ability to pay. In accounting for both spouses’ financial conditions, a court can order alimony in lump sum payments or the court can order payments to be made on a schedule.