Q: Nebraska.Owned home got married sold home purchased new home with all the money I made on sale.New home has only my name

A: You may be able to “trace” your premarital property into the new home you purchased to have the court separate it from the marital estate before dividing what is marital. You will need an experienced divorce lawyer to help you through that process. Best wishes!

A: Generally, property that was purchased in the marriage is marital. However, if a pre-marital asset or pre-marital funds were used to purchase the property during the marriage, then that part of the property may be a pre-marital asset. The burden is on the spouse arguing that the asset is pre-marital.

For example, if you owned a home prior to the marriage that was paid in full (no mortgage). A few months into the marriage, you sell the home for $100k and use those proceeds as a down payment to buy a home for $300k during the marriage. The parties then divorce a few years later. There is $100k left on the mortgage and $200k in equity. In that situation, the spouse might argue that $100k of the equity is due to the pre-marital funds and is thus a non-marital asset. The spouse would argue that of the $200k in equity, they are entitled to $150k and the other spouse is entitled to $50k. If the spouse could show enough evidence to trace $100k of the equity to the pre-marital down payment, the Court might award the spouse $150k of the equity as requested.

If you are thinking, what if the mortgage was not paid in full, what about the closing costs, what about the improvements made on the home during, what effect does the appreciate value have on the home, you can see why these questions of tracing can get complicated quickly.

Long story short, if you brought in a value asset to the marriage, it is often worth spending the time and money to properly trace the funds to argue for its value to be considered non-marital.