Inheritances and gifts, consideration in divorce

leo1983

Hello,

I would like to know from those who are divorced and who received an inheritance and / or gift from relatives how were said inheritances and gifts taken into account in your proceedings. Were they split 50 50 or did you have to give most away?
Many thanks.

MEM62

No two sets of circumstances are the same and therefore what happened to others is not likely to be relevant to you.  However, the staring point for marital assets is 50/50.  

Whalie

I had a divorced friend who was left a large gift in a will of an aunt of her ex-husband.  She did not leave anything to the husband!  My friend had always looked out for the aunt and visited often.  The nephew hardly ever.  If the aunt had died while they were married, my friend would have had to share the inheritance or at least put it in the financial pot.

elsien

And as a counterpoint to show there isn’t a one size fits all, sibling’s ex kept a full inheritance to themselves (court decision) as it happened while they were separating, 

TBagpuss

There's no hard and fast rule. A court has to decide what is fair and responable in the specific case based on it's own facts. 
One major facot in most divorces is 'needs' - if they only way to meet both partys needs is to include the value of things like an inheritance then t the court may take them into account . )technically you probably wouldn't get 50% of your spouse's inheritance, but you might get a larger share of the joint assets becaue they had the inheritance, so the net effect could be similar) 

While no assets are automaticlly ring-fencd and excluded from being split, where an asset has come from outside the marriage AND has ben kept seprate from matrionail assets (e.g. an inheritance that you've paid into a separate savings account which isn't used for any other savings, a property you owned in your sole name which was never used as the family home and which your spouse never sontributed to, things tlike that) then it can be viewed as a non-matrimonal assets andthe Court CAN chose not to include it in the diviion of the assets. 

OFten, since 'neds' are usually the main consideration, the effect of having something like that can be to bring the split back to 50/50 where otherwise it might not have been - e.g suppose the only joint asset was the house, Spouse A earns 3 x what Spouse B does and SpoiseB will be caring for the childnre. A court might decide to split the quity 65/35 in B's favour to reflect their higher needs and lower earning capcaity, meaning they would have lower morgage borrowing capciay so would need a bigger eposit to allow them to rehouse. If B inherited a alrge sum of money, it might become fair for them to keep that and to have 50% of the equity from the house, as with the inheritance they no longer need a bigger share of equity. 

Equally, if it was A who had the inheritance, B might argue that it was reasnable for them to get 70-80% of th e the equity as A needed less becasue they also had the inheritance to draw on.

So it depends on the specifc situation. 

It would be rare to have a situation whre the other spouse was entitled to 50% of the inheriance, however 

This doesn't apply if the inheritance or other asset has been mixed in wit hthe joint assets. If you have an inheritance abd use it to pay down your mortgage, then you don't get to claw that back if you divorce (unless of course you had signed a post-nup or declaration of trust at that time.)

VyEu

Inheritance is a prima facie non matrimonial asset but it can be brought into consideration in divorce proceedings if it is either a) mixed within matrimonial assets/used within the marriage or b) required to meet 'needs". Also if it's an asset that was inheres say 30 years ago at the start of the marriage then over that time period the non matrimonial nature of that asset loses it's non matrimonial quality over time.

So, it depends