Texas Trust Distributions Deemed Separate Property

In Benavides v. Mathis, a Texas court held that distributions from a Texas trust were separate property.

A spouse’s earnings from separate property are typically considered community property.  The wife in this case claimed one-half of the income from a mineral trust in which her incapacitated husband was a beneficiary.   The court found these income distributions were the husband’s separate property, relying on precedent “holding that distributions from an irrevocable trust are community property only if the recipient has a present possessory right to part of the corpus.”

See Charles Sartain & Alexandra A. Crawley, Distributions from a Texas Trust Deemed Separate Property, Energy and the Law, March 11, 2014.

Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse (Professional Legal Marketing (PLM, Inc.)) for bringing this article to my attention.