No, inheritance is separate property. However, we have found couples often turn separate property into community property when they add the spouse’s name to the property.
Separate property is property acquired before the marriage or during the marriage through gift or inheritance. An example of separate property might be $10,000 you had in a bank account, or a car you owned before the marriage. Other examples might be a home your parents left to you in their will, or a timeshare your brother gave you. These things are separate property. Separate property remains yours after a divorce. There are circumstances when separate property may be partially or completely turned into community property. Let’s take the $10,000 savings account example from above. Even if this account was separate property at the beginning of the marriage, a problem arises if the spouse owning the account starts to deposit the wages they earned during the marriage. The wages each spouse earns during the marriage are community property. So, as this community property is deposited into the separate account, it starts to change the nature of the separate account to a community account.
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