When dividing the joint property, each spouse should reimburse the expenses and expenditures made from the joint property to his personal property, except for expenses and expenditures necessary for income-producing property. He can also claim reimbursement for the expenses and expenditures he made from his personal property to the common property. The only exception is outlays and expenditures used to satisfy family needs - claiming their reimbursement is inadmissible unless it is shown that they increased the value of the property at the time of the cessation of the community.
It is worth pointing out at this point that the personal property of spouses, according to the law, includes property acquired before the formation of statutory community, property acquired by inheritance (both by statute and by will), bequest or donation, unless the testator or donor stipulated otherwise. In addition, personal property also includes property rights arising from joint ownership (e.g., property rights related to participation in a civil partnership), as well as property items used exclusively to meet the personal needs of one of the spouses. As indicated in the doctrine, personal needs are primarily needs related to certain characteristics of the spouse, daily life, or tastes. Thus, items that fulfill these needs, and thus are part of personal property, will include, for example, personal clothing, jewelry, books, etc.
Personal property also includes non-transferable rights, which may be vested in only one person (e.g. personal servitude), objects obtained by way of compensation for bodily injury or infliction of disorder of health or by way of compensation for harm suffered (this does not apply, however, to the pension due to the injured spouse due to the total or partial loss of earning capacity or due to an increase in his needs or a decrease in his prospects for the future), receivables from remuneration for work or other gainful activity of one of the spouses, property obtained as a reward for personal achievements of one of the spouses, copyrights and related rights, industrial property rights and other rights of the creator, as well as property acquired in exchange for components of personal property.
Reimbursement of outlays and expenses, as well as settlement of paid debts, can only be made in the context of proceedings for the division of joint property. It is also worth noting that the reimbursement of expenses and expenditures made from personal property to joint property will be decided by the court only at our request filed in the proceedings at first instance, while the reimbursement of expenditures from joint property may also be decided ex officio.
The demand for reimbursement of expenditures from personal property to community property should be precisely specified, and all our claims regarding the amount of expenditures, how they were made for the benefit of the community property, etc. - duly proven. The court will be bound by our position and the claims made, which means that it will not be able to expand them on its own, for example. It is therefore worth taking care to specify them accurately.
If we do not raise our demands related to the settlement of expenditures in the course of proceedings for the division of property, their subsequent satisfaction through the courts will not be possible.
The value of the outlays made is determined on the basis of the state of affairs at the time they were made and on the basis of the prices at the time of adjudication. According to the case law of the Supreme Court, when settling expenditures made from personal property to joint property, it is necessary to determine the fractional ratio of these expenditures to the market value of the property belonging to the joint property at the time of its acquisition, and then relate this figure to the value as of the date of division. It is not uncommon, especially in the case of real estate, that during the marriage the value of the joint house has increased significantly, which means that the repayment amount due to us will also be higher than our actual original contribution.
