Community of property: what is shared and what is not

When you marry without a contract, you probably did not choose a matrimonial regime. You still have one. It decides what belongs to you alone, what belongs to the couple, and it resurfaces the day things change, at separation as much as on death.

The regime that applies when you choose nothing

Without a marriage contract, spouses fall under a community regime. In practice, what you earn and buy during the marriage becomes shared: the salary, the savings, a home bought together. What existed before the union keeps its own status. Many couples discover this rule years later, often at the worst possible moment.

What stays yours, and yours alone

The assets you owned before marrying stay personal. So does anything you receive by inheritance or gift, even during the marriage. The tricky part is proof. Once a personal asset mixes into joint accounts, it becomes hard to show it is yours. Keeping a clear record of what came from an inheritance or an earlier purchase saves a lot of argument.

Why the regime weighs so much at separation

On the day of a divorce, the community is divided. Knowing what is part of it and what falls outside changes the outcome in real terms, especially for the family home. We look at that in our article on the fate of the family home. The regime also plays a role on death, since it first sets what belonged to the deceased before the estate is even opened.

Changing your regime is possible

The default regime is not compulsory. You can sign a contract before marrying, or change it later if your situation evolves, for instance to better protect the other spouse or account for inherited assets. That is the purpose of a marriage contract, which lets you adapt the rules to your reality rather than living with the ones set by default.

Debts enter the calculation too

People think of community property in terms of assets, rarely in terms of debts. Yet debts follow the same logic: a loan taken out during the marriage for the family's needs generally binds the couple, not only whoever signed. Conversely, a purely personal debt, incurred before the marriage or for a purpose unconnected to the family, does not take the same path. The distinction becomes very concrete when the estate is divided and someone has to decide who bears what.

The business and professional assets

For a self-employed person or a company director, the matrimonial regime is not a theoretical subject. A business created during the marriage, company shares, the income they produce: all of it is assessed against the community, and the value of the business can become the main issue in a separation. Many entrepreneurs discover late that the working asset they thought was personal falls partly into the division. It is one of the most common reasons to adapt your regime rather than accept the default one.

What the regime changes on death

Community property does not only concern separations. When one spouse dies, you first have to determine what belonged to them before inheritance is even discussed: the regime is wound up, then the estate is shared. This first step, often overlooked, largely determines what the surviving spouse will receive, a subject we cover in our article on the surviving spouse. A couple who do not know their regime therefore also do not know, in large part, what awaits the one who remains.

A joint account is not jointly owned money

The confusion is constant. A joint account says who can operate the account, not who owns the money in it. You can perfectly well hold an account with someone and pay your own funds into it, just as you can have a personal account fed by shared income. It is where the money came from that determines its fate, not the name on the account. The distinction matters most when an inheritance, or the proceeds of a sale predating the marriage, passes through a joint account: with no record of its origin, it becomes very hard to establish that it was never meant to be shared.

If you are not sure which regime applies to your couple, or what it means for you, a first confidential conversation makes things clear, in French or English, with no obligation.