Families and Couples

Community of Property

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Community of property was the matrimonial regime that applied automatically before July 1, 1970. It applied to all married couples who didn’t choose a different matrimonial regime in a notarized marriage contract. If you were married before this date, it’s possible that community of property applies to you.

Property covered by this regime

When community of property applies, your property is divided into three categories:

  • Private property, which is property that belongs to you alone. This includes things like buildings that you owned before the marriage and gifts or inheritances that you received during the marriage. It also includes financial compensation you received for physical or psychological injury, for example, and certain debts.
  • Shared property, which includes most of the property you get during the marriage. It also includes the property that you owned before the marriage, other than buildings, and certain debts. 
  • The wife’s reserved property, which includes her salary, her savings, and any property and buildings she bought using her salary. The husband doesn’t have any reserved property. But he has more rights and responsibilities than the wife when it comes to managing the shared property.

Rights and responsibilities of the husband and wife during the marriage

When community of property applies, the husband and wife don’t have the same rights and responsibilities.

The husband can:

  • manage, use, sell or give away his private property,
  • manage and use shared property.

However, the husband needs his wife’s consent or a court’s permission to give away shared property. He also needs this to sell or mortgage a shared building, an item used by the family, or a business.

The wife can:

  • manage, use, sell or give away her private property,
  • manage her reserved property on her own.

However, the wife needs her husband’s consent or a court’s permission to give away, sell or mortgage a building that’s part of her reserved property, an item used by the family, or a business.

Important! If your matrimonial regime is community of property, some of your property could be part of the family patrimony. For example, your family residence and any debts taken on to meet the family’s needs could be part of the family patrimony. Different rules apply to dividing this property no matter what your matrimonial regime is, unless you decided that these rules wouldn’t apply to you when you got married.

Dividing property at the end of the marriage

Community of property ends when one of these things happen:

The spouses must first divide the property that’s included in the family patrimony. You can then divide the property covered by the community of property.

When community of property applies, only the wife gets to decide if she wants to divide the community of property or not. If the wife wants to divide the community of property, the husband can’t refuse.

If the wife wants to divide the community of property, both the shared property and the wife’s reserved property will be divided equally between the spouses. Both spouses will become co-owners of all this property.

If the wife doesn’t want to divide the community of property, the husband will keep the shared property and the wife will keep her reserved property.