Tuesday, June 05, 2007

So Why Is This A Big Deal?

Two people get married back in the 1970s. The husband works. The wife works at home. They raise a family. The husband is successful in business. Husband and wife hit middle age and decide that now that the kids are out of the house, they can no longer stand each other so they want to get a divorce.

They go to the court. The court looks at everything and decides to do the equitable thing: everything accumulated as part of the marriage gets split in half.

Why is this news? Even if it resulted in the wife getting $184 million of the $368 million accumulated by the husband during the marriage, to me its still a no brainer. Apparently Illinois courts are just catching up to what California and other property states have been doing for centuries.

Can someone please explain to me the rationale of not having community property for married couples?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your wife is a very lucky woman.