Once married, many people wander what will happen to the properties they owned before marriage and properties acquired during its course, should they ever get divorced. It is quite distressing to discover that discussing distribution of assets during a divorce proceeding is very cumbersome if no regulation as to this issue had been agreed before the celebration of a marriage.

These “bitter” times could be avoided with the proper knowledge of the Dominican legislation that regulates marriage regimes, since it grants the right for future spouses to choose the regime of choice, which will govern all aspects of their properties during the marriage and at the time of its dissolution, if applicable.

If the spouses do not expressly choose a regime, it is understood by law that they have opted for the so-called legal community regime under which, as its name indicates, virtually all the assets of the spouses become part of a common mass of properties owned equally by both spouses, except for some isolated cases in which certain assets may be excluded by law from this common estate.

The ones the law excludes are the real estate properties acquired before marriage or assets received during marriage without paying for them, such as an inheritance, as well as property received through a donation, if the donor expressly states that such asset must be excluded from the common property of the spouses.

It is important to mention that not only the couple's assets become common property of the spouses, but also some debts specified by the Civil Code do so too.

It is also important to note that once the couple gets married without having chosen a specific marriage regime, therefore having the legal community regime apply to such marriage, the spouses cannot switch to another system, even with the occurrence of a divorce and re-marriage between the same spouses.