The legal regime
Getting married is a big decision in itself, but after that comes the decision of the marriage regime. If you did not draw up a marriage contract at the time of marriage or afterwards, you will automatically fall under the legal regime.
But how exactly does this legal regime work? We discuss it below in this Wanted Fact.
The legal regime has two types of assets
The legal regime has two types of assets:
- each spouse's own assets;
- the joint assets.
Joint is all income of both spouses, both professional income (wages, salaries, unemployment benefits, severance payments) and income from own property (rental income from own property, dividends from own shares).
All property that cannot be proven to belong to one of the spouses is also common (presumption of community of property).
Own property, in turn, is all premarital property. These are the assets that the spouse already owned before the marriage. It can be financial assets in the savings account, the real estate the spouse purchased before the marriage, the business the spouse ran when the marriage started, etc.
Any property acquired by a spouse through an estate or through a gift (received both before and during the marriage) is also his or her own.
Two types of debt
The legal regime has two types of debts:
- joint debts;
- each spouse's own debts.
A creditor of joint debts can normally recover them from both the joint assets and each spouse's own assets.
However, the Civil Code provides an exception for debts incurred for the profession of one of the spouses.
Debts contracted for the profession of one of the spouses are so-called imperfect joint debts and can only be recovered from the equity of the spouse who contracted the debt and from the common assets. So not on the assets of the other spouse.
So the fact that these debts can also be recovered from the common assets means that they can be recovered from the income (from employment or replacement income) of the other spouse (now that it is in the community).
A marriage contract?
If one of the spouses is engaged in a profession that may involve debts, such as entrepreneur, the drafting of a marriage contract may make sense. Please feel free to contact Wanted Law. We have prepared all possible contractual clauses that can serve for the drafting of a marriage contract.