Marital Property Regimes

Source: https://www.divinalaw.com/dose-of-law/mine-marital-property-regimes-domestic-
international-marriages/
Property Regimes:
 Conjugal Partnership of Gains (CPG)
o Spouses retain individual ownership of the property they had before they got
married. It is the income, fruits, proceeds, or “gains” from the spouses’ separate
properties that form their conjugal property or the common fund that is co-owned
by the spouses.
 Absolute Community of Property (ACP)
o Spouses become co-owners of properties they had separately owned at the time of
the celebration of marriage and those acquired thereafter during the course of their
marriage. This forms a common fund referred to as the absolute community; save
some exceptions which remain excluded such as property acquired by gratuitous
title by a single spouse alone.
 Complete Separation of Properties.
o Each spouse retains individual ownership of the property that they had brought
into the marriage as well as the property they had individually acquired thereafter.
The separation of property may refer to present or future property or both and it
may be total or partial separation. In the latter case, the property that was not
agreed upon to be separate, shall pertain to the absolute community of the
spouses.
In the case where spouses did not agree on a specific property regime in a pre-nuptial:
 For domestic marriages wherein both spouses are Filipino citizens, the reckoning point is
the date they were married. If the marriage was celebrated/solemnized on or before 3
August 1988 (the effectivity of the Family Code), the CPG is what will govern their
marriage. If the marriage was celebrated/solemnized after the abovementioned date, then
it is ACP that will prevail.
 International matrimonial laws and judicial rulings across international borders. For this
purpose, The Hague Conference or Private International law concluded the Convention
on the Law Applicable to Matrimonial Property Regimes. Under the said convention,
spouses may select which law shall apply to their property between the state wherein one
of the spouses is a national, the habitual residence of one of the spouses at the time of
selection, or a new habitual residence after the marriage. Unfortunately, the Philippines
is not yet a party to the said convention although it is a member of The Hague
Conference on Private International Law.
 For the EU, the member states have manifested efforts to establish enhanced cooperation
between themselves in the area of the property regimes of international couples. This
Enhanced cooperation was implemented in 2016 through Regulations EU 2016/1103 for
married couples and will fully apply starting 29 January 2019. The regulations prioritize
 the informed choice of law of the parties between the law of the State where the spouses
or future spouses, or one of them, is habitually resident at the time the agreement is
concluded; or the law of a State of nationality of either spouse or future spouse at the
time the agreement is concluded.
 Some special cases: Riechers v. Riechers – about how one spouse used marital assets to
fund a Cook Islands trust so the court ordered the other spouse’s share of that money be
paid from other assets even though the New York court had no jurisdiction over the trust
money.