Marriage property regime and division of common property: comparative legal analysis

The scientific article, based on a comparative legal analysis, clarifies the property regimes of spouses in European countries and reveals the peculiarities of the division of joint property of spouses. Many changes have been identified in the regulation of the property regime of spouses in Austria, in particular, such institutions as “marital share”, “bride’s ransom”, “early gift”, inheritance of marital share, widow’s allowance and legal usufruct have been abolished. These changes are important in terms of establishing a list of objects that are subject to division. In Belgium, the property relations of spouses were reformed by the Law of July 22, 2018, on the one hand, the presumption of community of property acquired by spouses during marriage remained, while during the discussion of the changes in parliament, the recommendations and principles of the Commission on European Family Law were mentioned. The introduced changes improved, first of all, the approaches to the division of housing, household goods, and professional assets. In Bulgaria, the 2009 Family Code introduced a new approach to the regulation of marital property relations. Instead of a single mandatory regime of community of property acquired during marriage, three property regimes were introduced, namely: a) joint ownership; b) separate ownership; c) contractual regime (introduced by a marriage contract). In Denmark, many changes in the regulation of marital property relations were introduced by the Act on Financial Affairs of Spouses, adopted in May 2017. The new Act retained the traditional approach - a legal presumption regarding the property regime between spouses on the principle of «deferred community of property», and from now on, spouses have the right to conclude agreements by which they can deviate from the equal division of property. However, the new law provided for several new objects that are currently already separate property and are not subject to division. In particular, a clear distinction is made between gifts between the bride and groom and gifts between spouses, i.e. after the marriage. The comparative study showed the lack of a unified approach in European countries to regulating marital property regimes and property division. The most interesting is the approach of the Danish legislator to the division of separate property into types - separate property after divorce and absolute separate property.