Talk:Community property

Strange move by User:SasiSasi in violation of the Article titles policy
SasiSasi's sudden move without warning or discussion makes zero sense. Searching for "Community property" on Google returns 3.5 million results, and I'll note from skimming through the first five pages of results that ALL of them refer to "community property" in the family law sense. Same goes for Google Books. SasiSasi has no basis for claiming that the term "community property" means anything other than the well-known marital property regime used in dozens of countries around the world and the U.S. Wikipedia policy is to put articles at the shortest possible commonly used title and then use hatnotes to disambiguate if necessary. So, first of all, "community property" needs to go right back to Community property where it belongs. Even if there is some obscure jurisdiction that actually uses the term "community property" as a synonym with "public property," that can be dealt with by adding a hatnote pointing to Public property in Community property's header. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:34, 30 March 2010 (UTC)


 * community property in the family law sense is particular to US law. The search results look a bit different when you search for community property on google.co.uk - http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&source=hp&q=community+property&meta=&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&fp=23e9d7872b349109

Here is a definition of community property in the US family law sense - "A U.S. state-level legal distinction of a married individual's assets. Property acquired by either spouse during the course of a marriage is considered community property. For example, an IRA in the name of an individual with a spouse, accumulated during the course of the marriage, would be considered community property." http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/communityproperty.asp

This article should be properly integrated into other US family law article in wikipedia. I will update some of the main links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Community_property --SasiSasi (talk) 20:13, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I firmly agree with Coolcaesar. "Community property" is commonly known to refer to this species of marital property, not to publicly-owned property. At best, this is a controversial move that should not be made without consensus. Under WP:BRD, let's revert and discuss. TJRC (talk) 22:45, 31 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Concur with TJRC. Also, skimming through the Google UK results reveals that nearly all of them refer to the marital property regime as well! By suggesting integration into other U.S. family law articles, SasiSasi also doesn't seem to understand the importance of community property as a subject in its own right---it is a REQUIRED subject on the California bar exam (the most difficult bar exam in the United States) because it can affect ANY case (NOT just family law) where a party is married.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:55, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Just countermanded a whole bunch of edits that SasiSasi made to other articles to point to the new article title. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:09, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Dab page
The page move can't be reverted without administrative intervention. I have no time to address this at the moment, but the correct approach would seem to be to open a request at WP:RM. Given that SasiSasi felt strongly enough to make this change without first attempting to obtain consensus, and only two other editors have so far voiced opposition, I would suggest that this be opened as documented under "Requesting potentially controversial moves."

If no one addresses this in the next few days, I'll try to get to it this weekend.

In the meantime, I have changed Community property to a disambiguation page naming both targets. This lowers the issue to simply obtaining a consensus of which of the two topics, if any, is the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC to which Community property should redirect. In any event, I suspect a dab page, probably named Community property (disambiguation), should be left over. TJRC (talk) 19:04, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * On second thought, this is now a garden-variety issue of reaching consensus on primary topic, so I'm dropping my suggestion of requesting a page-move. Let's just have the discussion over at Talk:Community property and get consensus in the ordinary course. 19:41, 1 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Of course this article should be at Community property. There's no other article using the title, and Public property doesn't even mention the phrase. Even if hypothetically public property was referred to as community property (it doesn't seem to be), for only two pages all that would be needed is a hatnote, not a disambiguation page. (It's better to discuss this here than at the other page, so the other talk page can be more easily deleted once this article is moved back to Community property.) Station1 (talk) 06:32, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Looks like SasiSasi hasn't bothered after several days to defend his/her actions and doesn't have the integrity to admit that he/she was wrong to begin with. Anyway, since SasiSasi isn't opposing at this point, we should proceed with reversing this nonsense.
 * Sadly, it's craziness like this by nonexperts that is driving away many experts from Wikipedia (there has been extensive press coverage of this issue in the past year), because they find themselves defending articles from such silliness more often than making substantive contributions. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:07, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

Wisconsin
Strictly speaking, Wisconsin is not a "Community Property" state but a (and the only) "Uniform Marital Property Act" state. In many respects it's the same thing, and after all, every CP state has its own version of CP. But there are historical and technical distinctions.

Here's an article that explains what happened after court decisions allowing income splitting in CP jurisdictions led separate-property states to enact CP laws, and how these laws were repealed after Congress allowed income splitting (joint federal income tax returns) by couples in all states: http://www.scribd.com/doc/30036669/50-Columbia-Law-Review-332-1950 Andygx (talk) 08:05, 2 June 2010 (UTC)

Move?

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:01, 12 April 2010 (UTC)

Community property (marriage) → Community property —
 * SasiSasi went and moved Community property with no warning on 30 March, then apparently realized that he/she was in the wrong and hasn't bothered to defend his/her actions on the talk page. Station10 and TJRC concur that in the legal field, the term community property has only one generally accepted meaning. Coolcaesar (talk) 16:18, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The new title is ambiguous. Property is held in common in many circumstances other than within a married couple. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 22:09, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * No, it's not. The ONLY term in which the exact word "community" is used to refer to jointly held property is when that community is a marital community.  Other terms are used for other types of ownership by strangers or other types of relationships, such as tenancy in common or joint tenancy.  See concurrent estate.  Run a search on Google for the phrase "community property" (with quotation marks), skim the first 5 pages of results, and you'll see what I mean.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 22:37, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Support move - There is no other competing usage necessitating a qualifier in the article name. Beyond My Ken (talk) 04:50, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Support move. "Community property" is commonly known to refer to this species of marital property, not to publicly-owned property. User:Anthony Appleyard's comment is not to the contrary.  The title is not "property held in common."  There is no evidence of common or widespread use of the term "community property" to refer to "public property."  TJRC (talk) 16:22, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Support - Haven't heard of public property referred to as "community property." "Federal" or "National" or "State" or "City" or "Village" maybe, but not "community" (probably because that would sound goofy in view of the well-established legal term referring to marital property).  This is a great example of the problems associated with somewhat uneven WP rules that seem to permit speculative renaming/dabs/redirects based on an individual editor's personal and perhaps idiosyncratic sense that "hey, maybe somebody not familiar with the topic might call it this."  Any help that this exercise might have offered in using the "search" function is far outweighed by the confusion it causes. Steveozone (talk) 02:15, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Aftermath of page move reversion
In the aftermath of moving community property (marriage) back to community property, community property (marriage) became a redirect to community property. In the interim since the original move and its reversion, a number of articles had been updated to point to community property (marriage) (usually, but not always, by SasiSasi). I've undone or rolled back those edits. TJRC (talk) 19:26, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Terrific. Thanks! --Coolcaesar (talk) 01:33, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

"Ganancial community" is rarely used in modern English
I ran a few Google searches and it appears that "ganancial community" is rarely used in modern English and only among some civil law experts who are not native English speakers. Most native English speakers who use the term at all use it alone because they understand it means community. Saying "ganancial community" is nearly as crazy and redundant as saying "the Sierra Nevada mountain range." I don't even speak Spanish and even I understand why THAT's wrong. --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:01, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * You couldn't be more wrong. First, I think your language skills aren't very sharp. If you bothered to look up "ganancial" in Webster's 3rd New Int'l dictionary or Black's Law Dic., you'd see it's an adjective, and the use you've quoted is a shorthand, sort of like referring to the Ritz-Carlton as the Ritz. Second, your Google searches aren't very refined; a number of native English-speakers (Americans mostly) use the term (see below), although some prefer "ganancial system" (like the Air Force). Using "ganancial", which is more precise, helps distinguish it from other community systems (and there are others, even in Sp-spking countries); only in a purely American context would qualifying "community" make no sense. In any case, "the ganancial" is absurd, precisely because it does NOT mean "community"; the term comes from Sp. sociedad de gananciales, where sociedad means "community" and gananciales means "gains, gain-related". Why do you think it's called a "conjugal partnership of GAINS" in the Philippines? Perhaps the fact that you don't speak Sp. is precisely why you shouldn't be weighing in on this at all.
 * A short reading list where either "ganancial community" or "ganancial system" is used:
 * Ballinger, Richard Achilles. A Treatise on the Property Rights of Husband and Wife Under the Community or Ganancial System (Nabu Press, 2010).
 * Cammack, Mark E. "Marital Property in California and Indonesia", Washington and Lee Law Review, 64, 2007, p. 1417.
 * DeFuniak, William Quinby & M. Vaughn, Principles of Community Property, 2d ed., (Tucson: U of Arizona P, 1971), 56.
 * Kuenzli, Capt. Kristine D. "Uniformed Services Former Spouses’ Protection Act: Is There Too Much Protection for the Former Spouse?", The Air Force Law Review, 47, 1999.
 * Sturiale, Jennifer E. "The Passage of Community Property Laws, 1939-1947: Was "More than Money" Involved?", Michigan Journal of Gender & Law (2005). Flibjib8 (talk) 14:39, 12 December 2010 (UTC)


 * No, it looks like you realized you're wrong---so you're trying to evade the core issue by conflating two substantially different usages. Most of those sources use "ganancial system," (which is consistent with the interpretation of the word as meaning community) NOT "ganancial community," which is the nonsense phrase you've been trying to insert into the article.  Also, it's Spanish, not "Sp."  --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Not most, more like half. Try reading them. And you clearly STILL haven't looked up "ganancial" in a dictionary. As for "Sp.", have you ever heard of an abbreviation? Your language skills get worse and worse. There is no conflation here; essentially you don't know what ganancial means, so you've relied on century-old documents written by people, just like yourself, who didn't really understand Sp. (uh-oh, it's an abbrev.!) Your interpretation continues to be fueled by the facts that (1) you have no understanding of Sp. (and how you can't see that "sociedad" - close to society - means 'community' and "gananciales" - close to gain - means 'gains' still eludes me), and (2) you are not well-read on the subject's terminological usage, or for that matter on different forms of community property in general. Flibjib8 (talk) 20:12, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Legal settlements?
Is a legal settlement such as compensation for injuries in a motor vehicle accident considered Community Property? If so, should this page mention that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.245.60.10 (talk) 06:34, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Louisiana and the Napoleonic Code
The article talks about Louisiana making a "rare departure from the Napoleonic Code." The Code Napoleon was codified in 1804. Louisiana became one of the United States in 1803. Precisely speaking, Louisiana was never subject to le code Napoleon; rather, Louisiana law is an amalgam of les cotumes de paris (French law prior to the Code Napoleon) and Las Siete Partidas (the Spanish civil code). This is perhaps one of the greatest misconceptions about Louisiana law. Davisbi (talk) 17:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, Louisiana was never subject to the Napoleonic Code, but the Digest of 1808 is based heavily on the Nap. Code, while borrowing some elements from Spanish law (not just the Siete Partidas). The Custom of Paris was abolished under Spanish rule and had only indirect influence on Louisiana law through the codal provisions that were borrowed from the Nap. Code which had in turn borrowed from the Custom of Paris (e.g. servitudes). The decision by the drafters to adopt the Spanish sociedad de gananciales (ganancial community) instead of the Napoleonic communauté de meubles et acquêts (which added pre-marital personal property into the community) was purely practical: everyone was married under the Spanish system, so importing the French system and making it apply retroactively would have been too burdensome. Torvalu4 (talk) 22:12, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Alaska: Text vs. map
In the body text, Alaska is listed as a community property state. However, on the map, Alaska is not highlighted as a community property state. Which is correct? (I think it's the text, but I'm not absolutely certain.) Either way, the one or the other should be corrected. DBowie (talk) 16:11, 24 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Alaska allows for community property, but property is treated as separate property unless the couple opts-in to community property. I presume that the mapmaker did not consider this strong enough to say it is a "community property state".  A couple approaches would be to color Alaska pink (i.e., halfway to red) or explain it in a caption.  For now, I'll add a caption. TJRC (talk) 20:48, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

You are Correct, USA is Evil. Needs to be foreign to USA.
In keeping with the spirit of Wikipedia, why not translate this into Spanish and Arabic and delete all English words? Similar to many other Wikipedia articles. I agree with you; nothing should have an American (USA) perspective. There should be absolutely no reference to USA anywhere. The English version of Wikipedia should be deleted. Swahili, Spanish, and Arabic only. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.218.81.69 (talk) 01:02, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Oh, for heaven's sake. I assume you're complaining sarcastically about the banner at the top of the article. At the moment, the article only has information about community property in the US, even though community property is a system that comes up in continental Europe as well as many former European colonies with civil law. This hyperbole about removing all references to the USA is bullshit; no-one thinks information about the US should be entirely removed, but the article does need to include information about other countries. - htonl (talk) 07:56, 13 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Or, barring that, the article should be changed to a discussion of American law only. For example, it could begin: "In American law, community property is ..." --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 19:45, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Other countries
Hi,

can this be expanded with community property in other countries? I know that in Hungary the default is that all property acquired by married people from the date of their marriage or cohabitation (whichever comes first) is common property, except for gifts and inheritance (or anything that was bought for money that one got after selling things received by gift or inheritance). Couples can have a marriage contract which stipulates separate property but it's not very common. I can look for sources but am afraid there will be none in English. I'd be interested in other countries' laws too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.98.44.165 (talk) 20:29, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Bias in "Purpose" section
The second sentence in the "Purpose" section is strongly biased toward a nearly theocratic viewpoint: "The countervailing majority view in most U.S. states, as well as federal law, which is based on traditional American family values and gender roles, is that marriage is a sacred compact in which a man assumes a "deeply rooted" moral obligation to support his wife and child, whereas community property, by the same token, essentially reduces marriage to an "amoral business relationship".[8]" This tendentious, inaccurate statement appears to exist solely to counter the very mention of "civil society" in the previous sentence, which is non-biased and historically accurate. I'll confess to being very new to commenting or editing on Wikipedia, so I've cautiously decided not to just edit this on my own. I'd like to know, however, if others think this sentence should either be removed or at least revised for neutrality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bradbard (talk • contribs) 17:42, 14 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, the phrases in quotes are actually the language used by Justice Thurgood Marshall on behalf of a Supreme Court majority in Rose v. Rose (1987), in the course of summarizing the court's own earlier holding in Wissner v. Wissner (1950) (which did not use such language but strongly implied as much). I personally favor community property as a more equitable system, and it was not until I came across Rose that I finally understood why the majority of states and the federal government have refused to adopt it. I then added that sentence to the article (citing Rose) to explain the situation. I believe the sentence accurately summarizes the combined implication of Rose and Wissner. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:26, 17 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I, too, am unhappy with the Purpose statement. (a) The issue is not whether or not that is an accurate quote. Rather, the issue is whether or not that is an accurate assessment of what a marriage is. Saying that it "essentially reduces marriage to an 'amoral business relationship' to me is a clear opinion with a bias, and assigns values to marriage which are NOT in the ceremony or the life a couple have together. (b) If we are dragging in values here (in the Purpose section), then we could also include mention of the fact that community property is also based on solid histories of Spanish and Roman law, something which is also outside the purview of Purpose. (c) Thus, I believe that the bias should be removed, and the Purpose section renamed Basis. Consequently, I am making these changes.
 * Please review Wikipedia's core policies. Wikipedia follows. It never leads. Stating that the real issue is whether the article "is an accurate assessment of what a marriage is" itself is unequivocal evidence of intent to violate long-established Wikipedia policy.
 * We accurately and fairly summarize in a neutral fashion what published sources say, even if they are wrong, pig-headed, or stupid. Again, I drafted that section as an neutral summary of the federal government's view of community property as expressed in a published opinion by the highest court of the United States. You may respectfully disagree, but the place to do that is in an article on your personal blog about how the federal government's view of community property is idiotic, not by purging accurate, properly sourced information in a Wikipedia article.  Your edits to that section are in clear violation of policies No original research, Verifiability, and Neutral point of view, and What Wikipedia is not.  They're also poorly written.  (No one outside the federal government capitalizes "federal.") Any objections before I take out the trash? --Coolcaesar (talk) 20:58, 24 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Hearing no objections, I am fixing this mess. --Coolcaesar (talk) 12:53, 13 March 2018 (UTC)

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This article needs to be reverted back to the last good version on 15 January 2019
On 15 January 2019 this article mostly made sense. Thanks to User:Park3r's edits, it's now an incomplete, disjointed mess with several assertions of doubtful veracity for which no citations have been given. Any objections before I revert this back to the last good version? --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:46, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I object. The article was tagged as being US-centric since December 2013. It was already a wall of text without sufficient citations. The bulk of the US content has been moved to Community property in the United States. The article in its current state represents an outline. It makes no pretense of being complete, but it can be expanded and rewritten. Moving it back to its former form would be pointless. I would be fine with turning it into a redirect to the relevant section in matrimonial regime, with the helpful parts salvaged. Park3r (talk) 11:14, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
 * And who is going to write it? The number of people in the world with sufficient experience in comparative family law is probably less than 100, and all of them are too busy teaching family law and writing papers for publication to fix this mess. The reality is that it will never get fixed. So you are arguing that this article should be kept permanently in an incomplete state. Not a convincing argument. --Coolcaesar (talk) 04:48, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It was a mess before it was split. Wikipedia isn't an American encyclopedia, and editors don't have to be experts in comparative family law to edit. The outline invites people to improve it. Turning it back into a US-centric wall of text is more intimidating to those who'd want to edit the page. Having it as an incomplete article serves another purpose: it signals to the casual reader that the information in Wikipedia on this topic is incomplete, and that they're better served looking elsewhere for information, rather than giving them a false sense of its accuracy. Park3r (talk)
 * No, it was a generally coherent summary (at least in the first part) of community property law. Now it hardly makes sense at all and violates the Wikipedia Manual of Style in about a half dozen ways that I don't have time to explain right now.  As a far more experienced editor (first edit was 22 August 2004), I can tell you that no one will ever fix the shambles you have left behind.  The best solution is to revert back to the last good version that mostly made sense.  --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
 * It's been five months and time has proved me right. A quick glance at the article history shows that as I expected, no one has the time, energy, or inclination to fix this train wreck. One of my guiding principles in editing Wikipedia has always been first, do no harm.  Unfortunately, that was not observed here. Any objections before I revert back to the last good version prior to 15 January 2019 and redirect the U.S.-specific article to this one? --Coolcaesar (talk) 07:34, 27 June 2019 (UTC)

I just remembered to follow up on this issue on Sunday in various online databases (Nexis Uni, HeinOnline, SpringerLink, ProQuest, etc.) when I happened to be visiting a university library. As I had guessed from my earlier searches on the public Web, there do not appear to be any published sources linking community property (that is, a concept transmitted from indigenous Visigothic law to Spanish law to American law) to community of property (which appears to have evolved entirely separately in the Netherlands and then was transmitted by Dutch colonists to South Africa). User:Park3r has committed a major error in confusing two entirely separate, unrelated concepts. Unless someone finds a source soon for what appears to be original research on User:Park3r's part in violation of WP:NOR, I am going to revert this article back to the last good version as of 15 January 2019. --Coolcaesar (talk) 19:38, 14 October 2019 (UTC)