Community Property and Its Relations to Federal Taxation

There are eight states in which the community property system obtains. They are: Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Washington. Community property is defined to be property acquired by a husband and wife, or either of them, during marriage, when not acquired as the separate property of either. The statutes of the several states in which the community system obtains, define the separate property of the spouses to be, in general terms, that owned by than before marriage and that acquired during marriage by gift, devise, or bequest, together with the rents, increases and profits arising out of such property. There will be found here and there slight differences in the state statutes and their construction by the state courts as to what constitutes separate property, but as this study deals primarily with community - rather than separate - property no more than a reference will be made to some of the distinctions.