Is the truck mine?

What is the name of your state?Illinois

Divorced June 03. In December this year the remaining issue of one property item will be heard. (he's delayed it several times, and didn't show up to the divorce hearing so this issue could be resolved)

He acquired a 6 year old truck prior to our marriage. HOWEVER, during the marriage I spent thousands on his bills (which he consistently failed to pay) and over $1500 in maintenance of this truck... it kept breaking down and he never had money to fix it. (He also failed to contribute to any household expenses, hence the eventual divorce) I also registered the truck, insured it, and drove it. I had another vehicle, but when it broke down at the same time as this truck I only had enough money to fix one. Since he had told me MANY times he'd pay me back for all the bills I'd paid, and for the costs of his truck maintenance, he agreed that if I would elect to repair the truck and renew it's registration (since he had no money, again... btw yes he had a job that paid same as my job), then he would sign the truck over to me as repayment. He did this. He didn't ADD me to the title, he transferred it to me completely. I insisted he do this so he couldn't try to take it back later if we didn't last. My other car never ran again, and I sold it for scrap. Months later the truck's break lights went out, and rather than repair it AGAIN, I traded it in toward another older vehicle that was more reliable.

Now the ex wants half the value of the truck, which he claims is marital property. Is it, or isn't it? It wasn't acquired during the marriage, it was transferred from him to me. Can you help?

Lets next fight over the silverware since we want to fight over everything. Interesting enough, I would have to agree that the truck became maritial property once he took his exclusive property and provided it to you during the marriage. I understand your arguement about you paid this bill and that bill for it but you two where married so the bills that where paid was for the benefit of the family.

Now, what is important is, what was the truck worth, and is it really going to make that much of a difference in the total seperation of property.

I would hope or encourage you all just to hurry up and get it over with so you two do not have to keep fighting each other over nominal stuff.

As much as I normally would appreciate the comment about squabbling over little things, this is the ONLY thing. I was looking for HELP, not snide remarks. And, by the way, the question I had was whether this was NON-marital property. It was TRANSFERRED TO me. Not added as both of ours. The purpose of describing the money transactions that took place was to demonstrate the circumstances under which it was transferred... or to put it another way, "gifted" to me. Basically it was a gift given to me from him as a way of making up for previous financial burden.

Buddy, if all you are here for is to insult people for trying to sort out their rights, then you need to head to a relationship column. And I strongly suggest you sort out your own bitterness rather than project it onto others.

If anyone else who can truly help me with this question would like to post a reply, I would love to hear what you have to say.

As for Bulldog... no thanks, pal. Take your issues elsewhere.

OH, and FYI....

Short term marriage, and those "benefit of the family" bills were ALL run up under HIS name BEFORE we started dating... about $35,000 in the space of only 3 months... that he not only neglected to pay, but neglected to mention until creditors started calling. Not to mention that we lived together only a total of 5 to 6 months in the entire year and a half marriage, and during that time he gave me NOTHING for OUR household. Felt free to eat everything in the house, though.

So again, Bulldogg... bye, now.