Participation in Acquired Assets: What Your Property Regime Means at Divorce and Death
If you marry without a marital agreement, you live under participation in acquired assets – usually without noticing. The property regime only becomes tangible when the marriage ends, through divorce or death. At that point, the origin of every franc decides who owns what.
The property regime is a marriage's quietest agreement: it applies from the day of the wedding, without a signature, without a conversation. If you agree on nothing else, you live under participation in acquired assets – and most people do exactly that. Day to day, it changes nothing. At divorce or death, it changes almost everything.
Eigengut and Errungenschaft
The law divides each spouse's assets into two pools. Eigengut (assets that stay a spouse's own property) comprises what a person brought into the marriage, plus inheritances and gifts received during the marriage, and personal effects. Errungenschaft (assets acquired during the marriage that are shared) comprises what was acquired for value during the marriage – above all earned income and everything saved or bought from it.
When the property regime is dissolved, each person keeps their Eigengut. The Errungenschaft, by contrast, is divided: each spouse is entitled to half of the other's surplus (Vorschlag). Simplified: what was brought into the marriage or inherited stays personal – what was earned together is split equally.
Why the Allocation Is So Difficult
On paper, this sounds clear. In practice, the two pools mix together over the years: inherited money flows into the renovation of a jointly purchased house. Salary fills the account that also feeds the securities portfolio someone brought into the marriage. A mortgage finances portions of both. After twenty years of marriage, almost every asset holds a mix of both spouses' Eigengut and Errungenschaft – and for anyone who cannot prove the origin of an asset, the law presumes it is Errungenschaft.
This is exactly where the real work lies: the division of matrimonial property is not a snapshot, but a tracing of money flows across the entire marriage.
What a Marital Agreement Can Change
Anyone who wants something different can choose another property regime by marital agreement: under separation of property, each person simply keeps their own assets, and nothing is divided. Community of property takes the opposite approach and largely pools the assets together. Even within participation in acquired assets, the division of the surplus can be adjusted by agreement – for instance in favour of the surviving spouse.
At Death, the Law of Succession Comes on Top
Often overlooked: when a spouse dies, the matrimonial property is settled first, and only then is the estate distributed. The surviving spouse therefore first receives their share under matrimonial property law – only what remains forms the estate that is distributed under the law of succession. Anyone planning to provide for a partner must think through both levels together; either one on its own gives a false picture.
Tracking the Origin, Not Reconstructing It
Wealth4Life tracks the matrimonial-property origin within the model: for every account, every property and every securities portfolio, it follows year by year which share comes from which spouse's Eigengut and which comes from Errungenschaft – even where mortgages, renovations and savings contributions mix the two pools together. A divorce or death scenario then shows what dissolving the property regime would actually mean – not as legal advice, but as a traceable calculation based on your own numbers.