Question: My parents died within six months of each other, and I was their only child. My husband and I have been married for the better part of 25 years, have two children, and have both worked outside the home throughout our marriage. After probate was over, I inherited four rental houses, some stocks, and bank accounts from my folks.

My husband was most helpful during my parents’ final months and, after they died, he persuaded me to sell the stocks to pay off more than $200,000 in debts we incurred for our children’s college, car loans, and home mortgage. He said that this would give us some “financial breathing room.” Then he tried to talk me into putting the rental houses half in his name, but I became suspicious and refused. Then I learned that he had been having an affair with a woman at his work, and I found a bill for the lawyer he had been seeing for months to plan his departure.

I threw him out of the house, and we are now involved in a nasty divorce. Had I known that my husband was having an affair with a co-worker and consulting with a lawyer, I would not have used my inheritance to pay off our debts. Now his same lawyer is saying that I can’t get back the inheritance I used to pay our debts. My husband also says that I need less support from him because I receive income from the rental properties. This does not seem fair since I was tricked by him and his lawyer.

Answer: Although we don’t know the remedy the law of your state may afford you, we believe that you have a persuasive case for the return of your inheritance. As you now understand, while inherited assets received by a husband or wife during marriage are “non-marital” property and not divisible at the time of divorce, the character of these assets may be changed, or “transmuted,” into marital property under certain circumstances.

First, your husband and his lawyer apparently planned for months how to attempt to transmute your separate property so that there would be no debt at divorce. If that is the case, using your inheritance to support the marriage might not rise to the required intent on your part to make your non-marital property marital. Another way non-marital property may be transmuted is when it is placed in joint names or commingled to the extent that it becomes untraceable. In the final analysis, whether non-marital property has become transmuted depends on the facts of each case as determined by a judge.

Here, since your inherited property was contributed to the marriage shortly before your husband left you -- and at his insistence -- it would appear to us that a judge may well find that you were duped into making transactions that would benefit your husband in these proceedings, not the marriage.

Since family courts are courts of equity, we believe there is enough at stake that you should seek the return of your inheritance. We suggest that you get your documents together, trace all of the transactions, prepare a timeline, and make sure your lawyer is comfortable with the positions you are taking. Since decisions in matrimonial cases are based upon the facts presented to a judge, credibility is important, and, hopefully, your husband’s ruse will come back to haunt him.