It has been less than 15 days since 2022 began. It is a year full of weddings postponed due to the Covid19 pandemic. Maybe this is also your case and, after a long wait, you will celebrate your wedding this year. Have you already decided how you are going to do it? Will it be a civil or a religious marriage? And, most importantly, have you already decided under which legal regime you want to get married? In Spain, the default regime is the community property regime. But, what does it mean to get married under the community property regime? In today’s post we will explain what it is and what alternatives exist. Here we go!
What is the community property regime?
The community property regime is one of the forms of regulation of the economic aspects of marriage. It consists in that, once the marriage has been contracted, any purchase made by one of the spouses, will become part of the common patrimony of both. That is to say, everything will always belong to both of them and will be shared. The same happens with the profits that can be obtained by any of the parts of the marriage whether they are salary earnings, income, investments, etcetera.
Only those assets that have been acquired before contracting the marriage and those that are acquired later by means of inheritances or donations will be excluded from the common patrimony.
What matrimonial property regime applies in Spain?
In the majority of the Spanish territory, the regime that is applied by default is the community property regime. Even so, of course, people who are going to get married can choose another legal regime if they wish to do so. In this case, the spouses must sign a deed before a notary choosing a different legal regime.
There are some autonomous communities in which the default regime is not the community property regime, but the separation of property regime. These communities are Aragón, Baleares, Cataluña, Navarra, Comunidad Valenciana, Galicia and País Vasco.
What other alternatives are there to the community property regime?
As we have just mentioned, in some communities in Spain, the separation of property is applied by default. Together with the participation regime, this is one of the alternatives to the community of property.
What is the matrimonial regime of separation of property?
The separation of property is the opposite of the community of property regime. That is to say, it cancels all the matrimonial effects on the patrimony. Once the marriage has been contracted, each of the spouses will continue to maintain his or her private assets, consisting of both his or her previous assets and the assets that he or she may acquire later.
What is the participation regime?
This is another alternative to the community property regime. It is a mixed regime between the community of property and the separation of property. This regime proposes that the spouses maintain their separate estates during the duration of the marriage. However, if the marriage comes to an end, each of the parties will have the right to participate in the profits obtained by the other party during the duration of the regime.
The percentage of this participation must be fixed before its signature and must always be the same for both spouses.
Have you already decided which matrimonial property regime you and your partner want to choose? Remember that at People Global Relocation we are here to help you with all the doubts you may have about the necessary documentation for your marriage.
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