The statute begins from an equal split, then lets a court move off it for reasons it must name in writing.
Florida is an equitable distribution state, not a community property state. Section 61.075 directs a court to begin with the premise that marital assets and liabilities should be divided equally, and then to justify any unequal division by reference to listed factors.
The section requires the court to identify marital and non-marital assets and liabilities, value the marital ones, and distribute them. It starts from equal division and permits departure based on factors including each party’s contribution to the marriage, economic circumstances, the duration of the marriage, interruption of careers or education, and intentional dissipation of marital assets. Any unequal distribution must be supported by written findings.
§ 61.075 · read it on leg.state.fl.us
The first fight is usually not how to split an asset but whether it is marital at all. Property owned before the marriage is generally non-marital — but appreciation during the marriage, or marital money spent on it, can pull part of it back in.
Commingling is what catches people. A pre-marital account that marital earnings were paid into may no longer be cleanly separable, and proving what was yours requires records going back to the date of the marriage.
Dissipation is the other live issue. Money spent on a third party, or moved shortly before filing, can be charged back against the party who spent it.
Most property fights are not about how to divide an asset. They are about whether it counts as marital in the first place. Once both sides agree an asset is marital, splitting it is usually straightforward.
Non-marital claims are the clearest example. Clients who can produce the account history keep what is theirs. Clients who can’t spend months and a great deal of money trying to reconstruct it — which is the situation this product is designed to prevent.
This is the most document-hungry part of a divorce. Tracing a non-marital claim can mean years of statements for a single account, and if you hand your attorney a box instead of an organized file, the sorting is billed at their rate. AutoCollect exists for exactly this.
Part 5 of Before You File sets out the full document list, and AutoCollect retrieves the bank and financial institution records for you.
See what is included