A divorce can change how people remember their weddings. Instead of reminiscing about the tender moments, they tend to fixate on the price tag. Here are notes on whether you can recover common costs of your wedding when you get divorced:
Engagement Ring
Clients often ask if they can be reimbursed for the cost of the engagement ring. Under Washington State law, the answer is no. Engagement rings are typically considered conditional gifts from one spouse to the other prior to marriage, and such gifts are separate property.[1] The good news is that watches, wedding bands, and any other items that one spouse might gift the other would also be treated as separate property. Either spouse is still free to request such property be returned to them during the divorce. However, unless the gift is a family heirloom, such requests are rarely granted. The only instance where a ring might be returned is where parties do not marry, since marriage is an implied condition to transfer of title and the gift does not become absolute until the marriage occurs.
Wedding Gifts
Clients sometimes claim that certain wedding gifts were gifts only to them and not their spouse and, therefore, should be considered their separate property. This claim is hard to prove. Whether something is a gift typically depends on the person giving the gift, aka the “donor’s,” intent. For cash gifts, a party could assert that the donor’s intent is evident if they only made the check out to one person instead of to the couple. For items of personal property (i.e., a Le Creuset Dutch oven), it can be more challenging because those gifts are usually addressed to the couple. More importantly, the cost of attorney’s fees to argue over whether such item was intended to be a gift to only one person may exceed the value of the item itself. Unless an item has special meaning, an attorney will likely suggest that the client consider purchasing a replacement instead.
Wedding Expenses
In some situations, one spouse contributes significantly more to the cost of the wedding than the other spouse. If the couple later gets divorced, the spouse who paid more may assert that he or she should get credit in the financial settlement for their contributions towards the wedding. This is not a winning argument. First, many couples today live together before marriage in what is referred to in Washington as a “committed intimate relationship” (CIR). If a court finds that there was a CIR, the couple’s earnings while they were living together would be treated as community-like property and there would be no right to reimbursement for the spouse claiming to have contributed more. Another reason it is ill-advised to try to get credit for wedding expenses is because doing so can open the door to a debate of “who paid for more” and distract from the more important financial issues in the divorce.
[1] RCW 26.16.010.
