On January 20, 2025, the General Civil Procedure Committee of the Supreme Court of Cassation issued an Interpretative Resolution under commercial case No. 2/2022, in which the supreme judges resolved the long-debated theoretical and practical issue concerning the ownership of real estate property paid for during marriage from the deposit of one of the spouses.
The Interpretative Resolution holds that when a real estate property, acquired during the marriage under the Family Code (FC) of 2009, has been paid with funds from a deposit of one of the spouses, the property is considered matrimonial property under the applicable legal regime governing the matrimonial property relations between spouses – the ownership belongs to both of them and is not personal property of the spouse who is the holder of the deposit.
In the event of a dispute between the spouses regarding ownership, the spouse holding the deposit is the one who must prove that the other spouse has had no contribution to the accumulation of the funds on deposit (i.e. must rebut the joint contribution presumption under Article 21, par. 3 of the FC) or that the origin of the funds accumulated in the deposit, is exclusively from his personal funds (i.e. to prove the facts establishing the acquisition by transformation of personal property under Article 22, par. 1 of the FC). Only when these facts are proved, it can be presumed that the real estate property is solely owned by the spouse – holder of the deposit. If there is no success in proving said facts, the real estate property shall be considered owned by both spouses as a matrimonial property under the applicable legal regime.
You can read the whole Resolution here.
