Community Property in the United States

Now with a new co-author, Sally Brown Richardson, Community Property in the United States is the longest-running community property casebook that discusses community property law in all nine community property states: the eight states that derived their community property systems from Spanish-Mexican or Spanish-French colonial law (Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Washington) and Wisconsin, which has community property laws based upon the Uniform Marital Property Act.

The casebook covers five main subjects: an overview of what is community property, the classification of property as community or separate, the management regimes used for community property, the effects of termination of a community on community property, and external impacts that affect community property regimes, such as federal preemption and conflicts of law. For each of these broad areas, the casebook uses a comparative approach to examine the similarities and differences between the states so that readers may observe the strengths and weaknesses of the rules in their own state.

Observation of these similarities and differences will enhance the student's understanding of a particular state's law and develop his or her critical faculties. Each chapter ends with real world problems to engage the reader with current issues facing community property jurisdictions.

PowerPoint slides are available upon adoption. Sample slides from the full 47-slide presentation are available to view here. Email crutan@cap-press.com for more information.