GLASTONBURY, CONNECTICUT · FAMILY LAW + FAMILY-VIOLENCE DEFENSE
Two beliefs bring people to this page, and both are wrong in Connecticut. The first is that everything gets split down the middle. The second is that what you brought into the marriage is yours.
Equitable means fair in the circumstances. It does not mean equal, and there is no presumption that an even split is the right answer.
Under C.G.S. §46b-81, the court weighs the length of the marriage, the causes of the breakdown, and each spouse’s age, health, station, occupation, income and sources of income, earning capacity, vocational skills, education, employability, estate, liabilities, and needs. It also weighs each spouse’s opportunity to acquire assets and income in the future, and the contribution each made to acquiring, preserving, or increasing the value of the marital estate.
In practice, long marriages where both spouses contributed in comparable ways often end near an even division. Short marriages, second marriages, and marriages where one spouse arrived with substantially more frequently do not.
This is the part that surprises people, and it is the single biggest difference between Connecticut and most other states.
Section 46b-81 permits the court to assign to either spouse “all or any part of the estate of the other.” There is no protected category of separate property. Assets owned before the marriage, inheritances, and gifts made to one spouse alone are all within the court’s reach.
That does not mean they get divided. Where an asset came from is one of the things a judge weighs, and property kept genuinely separate often stays with the spouse who brought it. But that outcome depends on a judge’s discretion rather than on a rule that puts it off limits — which is a materially weaker position than people assume when they read national articles about “separate property.”
The statute’s reference to contribution is not limited to earnings. A spouse who raised children, ran the household, or supported the other’s career has contributed to the marital estate, and that counts.
Once a judgment divides property, that division cannot be modified. Not if an asset turns out to be worth more than anyone thought, not if circumstances change, not if the deal looks lopsided in hindsight.
It can be enforced — if someone fails to refinance, transfer, or pay what the judgment required. Enforcement and modification are different things, and conflating them wastes time.
The house, by sale or buyout. Retirement accounts, where the marital portion is divisible and dividing an employer plan generally takes a separate order entered after judgment. A business, which has to be valued. Debt, which is divided along with assets. And anything one spouse believes the other dissipated.
Connecticut courts can reach inherited and premarital property. What that means in practice, and what actually protects an asset.
Read more
The house was supposed to be refinanced. The QDRO was never entered. What to do when a divorce judgment’s property terms are not carried out.
Read more
Connecticut divorce attorney Daniel M. Morton explains property division, alimony, and the process in the Hartford Judicial District. Glastonbury office.
Read more
Every case starts with a conversation about what you’re facing and what it would take to handle it.
