Q: I owned my house for 20 years previous to being married. I added my wife’s name to the deed after marriage.
We are divorcing after only 15 months of marriage. Is she automatically entitled to 1/2 of the appraised value just because I added her to the deed? Or just the increase in appraised value of the house since the marriage?
A: If you added your wife to the deed of a property you owned that transferred an ownership interest in the property to her at that time. How the property will be equitably distributed in a divorce is more properly addressed as a matter of matrimonial instead of real property law, which should consider numerous factors in addition to the deed.
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