Assume you have no assets and marry someone with a 1 million

.Assume you have no assets and marry someone with a 1 million dollar home, and cash, investments, and other property with a total value of 9 million dollars. You and your spouse live in a community property state. Your spouse goes to Las Vegas one weekend and uses their home and assets to secure a 12 million dollar line of credit. Your spouse runs up a gambling debt of 15 million dollars. Upon finding out what happened in Vegas, you initiate divorce proceedings. How much of the casino debt do you owe and why?

Solution

Assuming the person in question is me, I would owe half of the total gambling debt of 15 million dollars, i.e. 7.5 million dollars. This is because, unless it is shown to the contrary, it is presumed in a court of law that this is a case of a marital debt, which means a debt that is incurred for the benefit of both the parties (e.g. husband & wife).

To help illustrate this point further, if, for instance, the situation had been otherwise, and the gambling exercise had resulted in some positive earnings, then it would have stood to reason that both the parties would have had the right to 50% of the earnings, and hence the same applies to the case in question, too.