What effect does the length of the marriage have on property division?
Generally, property division involving a short‑term marriage is relatively straightforward. When few or no joint assets have been accumulated, the tendency is to “untangle” the marriage. This means giving back to the husband and wife what each of them brought to the marriage, both assets and debts, and dividing up in some fair way the assets and debts the parties accumulated in the marriage. The court attempts to return the parties to the financial position in which they arrived at the marriage. The more the parties have “co‑mingled” their assets, however, the more difficult this “untangling” may become. In distributing property after a longer term marriage, the judge’s tendency will typically be to begin with something like a 50/50 division of the marital estate. The judge might depart from that 50/50 standard, though, depending on what the judge thinks is equitable under the circumstances.
The goal in a short-term marriage is to put the parties back to where they would have been economically had there been no marriage, while dividing the community property equally. The goal in a long-term marriage is to financially equalize the future of the parties, which may require giving more than 50% of the property to one spouse. A medium-length marriage combines these goals, and may include balancing the financial needs of children and a spouse who has been unemployed or underemployed while the children have been minors.
Although there is no requirement that distribution of marital assets be on a 50-50 basis, in a marriage of long duration (20 years or more), the courts will generally try to divide the property as equal as possible. Again, however, the court may use its discretion to deviate from the “50-50” basis, depending on whether or not their was any egregious misconduct perpetrated by a party. Conversely, the shorter the marriage, (a few months to a few years), the more the courts try to put the parties in the same or close to the same position as they were in before the marriage, or would have been if there was no marriage. In these short marriage (less than 10 years), the court may attempt to prorate marital property in accordance with the relative earnings of the parties during the marriage. The one who earned more, gets more; the one who earned less, gets less. In middle length marriage, there are no firm rules. If there are children of the marriage it is more likely to be treated like a lon
