The Supreme Court explains: how to divide personal property during a divorce?

In the case in question, spouses from the Krasnodar region entered into a marriage contract. According to its terms, the apartment they acquired jointly was recognized as the property of the wife. They also entered into an agreement on the division of property, according to which another apartment was worth 3,769,716 rubles — in case of divorce it was supposed to become the property of the husband. In this case, the wife was entitled to 700 thousand rubles in compensation.

Several years have passed. The marriage was dissolved. And the ex-husband decided that the terms of the agreement and the prenuptial agreement put him at a disadvantage, since they were deprived of all jointly acquired property.

According to the ex-husband, the apartment costs 3,769,716 rubles is not joint property, because it was purchased with his money — he personally entered into an agreement for shared participation in the construction. And the citizen went to court with a claim to have the agreement and the marriage contract declared invalid. The dispute was noticed by the Pravo.ru portal.

This civil case was considered by the Gelendzhik City Court. And I came to the conclusion that the documents — the agreement and the marriage contract — comply with the law. They are concluded with the mutual consent of the spouses during the marriage voluntarily in accordance with their conscious expression of will. According to the court, the disproportionality of the property allocated to each of the spouses is not in itself a basis for declaring the marriage contract and agreement invalid. Therefore, the court of first instance denied the ex-husband’s request.

The citizen challenged the refusal, but the Krasnodar Regional Court found that the parties included in the agreement property that was not joint, and this cannot be done. Therefore, the court partially canceled the previous decision and made a new one — declaring the agreement on the division of property invalid. The regional court also recovered 700 thousand rubles in compensation from the ex-wife in favor of the ex-husband. The offended ex-wife complained to the Supreme Court. He established that at the time of the conclusion of the agreement, ownership of the apartment was registered with the man on the basis of an agreement for participation in shared construction. Moreover, the registration was made during the marriage. This apartment was purchased for 2 358 087 rubles and assessed by the parties at 3,769,716 rubles The position of the Supreme Court on this issue: spouses have the right, at their discretion, not only to change the regime of property acquired during marriage, but also to include in the marriage contract and other agreements any conditions that do not contradict the law, including the disposal of the personal property of each spouse. This is not prohibited by Article 38 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation and cannot be interpreted as a violation of the law. Therefore, the Supreme Court canceled the appeal decision recognizing the agreement on division of property concluded by the parties as a void transaction and upheld the decision of the court of first instance.

The main conclusion of the Supreme Court is that the parties have the right to include their personal property in the division agreement. Therefore, the agreement is considered valid.

Experts called this situation very interesting from a legal point of view. If the spouses decided to divide all their property — both personal and joint — in a certain way, then it would be incorrect to oppose this.

Lawyers specializing in such courts praised the Supreme Court’s determination. According to them, there used to be contradictory practice — some courts interpreted the agreement formally and recognized only the conditions related to common property. This led to inconvenience, since the parties had to enter into other agreements according to which the division of personal property took place. The Supreme Court approached the resolution of this dispute not along a formal path, but based on the principles of expediency.

According to the general opinion, the position expressed by the Supreme Court is important for the formation of law enforcement practice and the courts’ assessment of both the terms of the agreements concluded by the spouses and the possibility of approving settlement agreements redistributing the property of the spouses. And to this they also add that in the past, notaries often refused to allow citizens to include their spouse’s personal property in the property subject to division. But now the doubts of notaries have been eliminated. This is also good for civil transactions, as there will be more options for dividing property.

Determination of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation N 18-КГ19-82

Source: Russian newspaper — Federal issue: No. 236 (9775)