Under North Carolina law, if you inherit money from a parent and later divorce your spouse, is the inherited money treated as separate property, or does it get divided as part of the marital estate?
Under North Carolina law, if you inherit money from a parent and later divorce your spouse, is the inherited money treated as separate property, or does it get divided as part of the marital estate?
If the money is kept separate, the chances of a court treating the money as separate property increase significantly. If the money is commingled with marital assets, it becomes much more difficult to contend that the money is separate. As North Carolina can potentially include separate property in a divorce settlement under principles of equitable division, it is important that the spouse trying to keep the property separate consult a divorce lawyer to form a strategy to protect the separate nature of the inheritance.