Nevada Community Property Laws
Most writing about Nevada community property is about divorce. This page is about the other two-thirds of a marriage: the years while it is intact, and the day it ends in a death. NRS 123.230 gives either spouse the same power over community property that they have over their own separate estate — and then takes six specific things back. NRS 123.240 tells a plan administrator when it may safely pay. NRS 123.250, 111.064 and 134.030 decide what a death does, and they do not say what most people assume. Division in a Nevada divorce is a different subject and it has its own page, linked below. General legal information, not legal advice.
The Short Version
NRS 123.220 makes property acquired after marriage community unless a written agreement between the spouses, a decree of separate maintenance, NRS 123.190 or a decree or agreement under NRS 123.259 says otherwise. NRS 123.010 puts the whole chapter behind two things that can displace it: a premarital agreement enforceable under NRS chapter 123A, or a marriage contract or settlement containing contrary stipulations.
What the chapter then does is unusually practical. NRS 123.230 lets either spouse act alone with full power of disposition and carves out six transactions that need both. NRS 123.240 tells an employer, trustee or insurer exactly when a payment discharges it. NRS 123.121 splits a damages award into three differently characterised pots. And at a death NRS 123.250 makes the survivor’s half their sole separate property and leaves only the decedent’s half subject to administration, while NRS 111.064(2) lets one spouse extinguish a survivorship right by transferring their own interest. Each of those is answered by an instrument with a date on it. Locating and dating those instruments is our part, once there is a purpose the law permits.
Watch: Nevada During the Marriage
Who may act alone, and what a death changes.
Watch Overview
Full Power, and the Six Things It Does Not Cover
NRS 123.230, read to the end.
NRS 123.230 opens generously. A spouse may by written power of attorney give the other complete power to sell, convey or encumber any property held as community property; and either spouse, acting alone, may manage and control community property — whether acquired before, on or after 1 July 1975 — with the same power of disposition that the acting spouse has over his or her separate property. Then come the exceptions, and they are specific rather than general.
One. Neither spouse may devise or bequeath more than one-half of the community property. A will that purports to give away the whole of a community asset is attempting something the section forbids.
Two. Neither may make a gift of community property without the other’s express or implied consent. Note that Nevada accepts implied consent here, where NRS 123.230(3) demands a signature for land.
A word on scope, because Nevada has two pages here and they answer different questions. This one is about the marriage while both spouses are alive, and about what happens when one of them dies: who may act alone, who a third party may safely pay, and how the community splits at a death. The divorce question — the community presumption, what a recorded separate-property inventory under NRS 123.140 to 123.160 does to a purchaser, and the equal-disposition rule with its written compelling-reason exception under NRS 125.150 — is answered on our page for Nevada marital property laws. No statute is worked twice across the two.
Three. Neither may sell, convey or encumber community real property unless both join in executing the deed or other instrument — and the instrument must be acknowledged by both. The acknowledgment requirement is separate from the signature requirement, and it is visible on the face of a recorded instrument.
Four. Neither may purchase, or contract to purchase, community real property unless both join in the transaction or in the contract. That is the mirror of exception three and it is the one people forget: Nevada regulates the acquisition, not only the disposal.
Five. Neither may create a security interest in, or sell, community household goods, furnishings or appliances unless both join in executing the security agreement or contract of sale — with a purchase-money security interest as defined in NRS 104.9103 excepted.
Six, and the fact it turns on
The last exception is the one that changes with the facts. Neither spouse may acquire, purchase, sell, convey or encumber the assets of a business — including its real property and goodwill — where both spouses participate in its management, without the other’s consent. But where only one spouse participates in management, that spouse may do all of those things in the ordinary course of business without the non-participating spouse’s consent.
So the validity of a Nevada business transaction can turn on two factual questions that no document states outright: who actually managed the business, and whether the transaction was in the ordinary course. Entity filings, officer and manager designations at the Secretary of State, signature blocks on prior contracts and the pattern of past dealings are what answer them — which is why this exception is a records exercise rather than an argument. Where the holdings run through layered entities, the methods are set out in our guide to finding hidden assets in a divorce.
When a Third Party Can Safely Pay
NRS 123.240, 123.190 and 123.121.
NRS 123.240 exists for the institution in the middle, and it is written as a safe harbour. Notwithstanding NRS 123.220 and 123.230, wherever a payment or refund is made to an employee, a former employee, or that person’s beneficiary or estate under a written retirement, death or other employee benefit plan or savings plan, the payment fully discharges the employer and any trustee or insurance company from all adverse claims.
The discharge has one condition and it is procedural. It does not apply if, before the payment or refund was made, written notice by or on behalf of another person claiming entitlement had been received — by the employer or former employer at its principal place of business within this state, where the employer is paying, or by the trustee or insurance company at its home office, where it is. The section closes by preserving every claim and right as between all persons other than the employee and the paying institution.
Read carefully, that is a rule about an address and a date. A surviving or non-participant spouse who believes a plan holds community money does not protect anything by knowing it; the protection comes from a written notice arriving at a specific office before the money leaves. Whether such a notice was sent, where, and when, is exactly the kind of fact a documented file establishes.
A signature that converts an income stream
NRS 123.190 is short and its effect is permanent. Where a spouse has given written authority to the other spouse to appropriate the first spouse’s earnings to the other’s own use, those earnings — together with the issues and profits of them — are deemed a gift from one spouse to the other, and are the latter spouse’s separate property. NRS 123.220(3) then lists that section as one of the four things that displace the community default. One authorisation therefore moves not only the wages but everything they were invested in.
One cheque, three characters
NRS 123.121 governs how a joint award is segregated. Where spouses sue jointly and the action is for personal injuries, damages assessed for personal injuries and pain and suffering go to the injured spouse as that spouse’s separate property; damages for loss of comfort and society go to the spouse who suffered that loss; and damages for loss of services and for hospital and medical expenses go to the spouses as community property. Where the action is for injury to property, damages follow the character of the property injured. A settlement that arrives as a single number therefore has to be unpicked from the pleadings and the allocation documents before anyone can say whose it is.
One Signature or Two
NRS 123.230 and its neighbours, transaction by transaction.
| The act | What Nevada requires | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Managing or disposing of community personal property generally | Either spouse alone, with the same power of disposition they have over their own separate property. | NRS 123.230 |
| Selling, conveying or encumbering community real property | Both must join in executing the instrument and both must acknowledge it. Two acts, not one | NRS 123.230(3) |
| Buying community real property | Both must join in the purchase or in the contract to purchase. | NRS 123.230(4) |
| Selling or pledging household goods, furnishings or appliances | Both must execute the security agreement or contract of sale; purchase-money security interests excepted. | NRS 123.230(5) |
| Dealing in the assets or goodwill of a business | Both spouses’ consent where both participate in management; the sole manager alone in the ordinary course where only one does. | NRS 123.230(6) |
| Paying out an employee benefit or savings plan | The payor is discharged, unless written notice of a claim reached the right office before payment. | NRS 123.240 |
Three of these rows are decided by a recorded instrument, one by a filing at the Secretary of State, one by a security agreement and one by a letter that either did or did not arrive. All six are documents. We locate them and give you the date; a Nevada attorney decides what follows from them.
Support, Necessaries and the Institutionalised Spouse
NRS 123.090 to 123.110, 123.180 and 123.259.
Three short sections govern what a spouse owes for the household, and they are older and blunter than most modern equivalents. NRS 123.090 provides that where a spouse neglects to make adequate provision for the support of the other, any other person may in good faith supply the neglected spouse with articles necessary for support and recover their reasonable value from the neglecting spouse — and that the neglecting spouse’s separate property is liable for the cost if the community property is not sufficient. NRS 123.100 removes the obligation where a spouse has been abandoned, until the abandoning spouse offers to return, unless the abandoned spouse’s own misconduct justified the abandonment. NRS 123.110 requires a spouse to provide support out of separate property where the other has none, the couple have no community property, and the other is unable through infirmity to support themselves.
NRS 123.180 handles children’s money. Property a child acquires by gift, bequest, devise or descent, with its rents, issues and profits, is the child’s own and neither parent has an interest in it. But the earnings and accumulations of earnings of a minor child are the community property of the parents unless relinquished to the child, and the section accepts a written instrument, proof of a specific oral gift, or proof of a course of conduct as showing relinquishment. Where a married couple live separate and apart, those earnings become the separate property of the spouse with custody, or with whom the children live.
A division nobody expects to find
NRS 123.259 is the section most likely to explain an otherwise inexplicable Nevada title. On the petition of a spouse or a spouse’s guardian, a court may enter a decree dividing the income and resources of a married couple where one spouse is an institutionalised spouse and the other is a community spouse — unless the division would be contrary to an enforceable premarital agreement under NRS chapter 123A. The court may divide equally, or protect income for the community spouse by reference to the federal minimum monthly maintenance needs allowance and resource limits in 42 U.S.C. 1396r-5, and may go further on a finding of exceptional circumstances resulting in significant financial duress, set out in writing.
Subsection 7 allows the same result by agreement: spouses may enter a written agreement dividing community income, assets and obligations into equal shares of separate income, assets and obligations, effective only where one spouse is institutionalised and the other is a community spouse, or where the division would let one spouse qualify for services under the sections the statute names. NRS 123.220(4) then lists a decree or agreement under 123.259 as one of the four things that take property out of the community default. A recorded deed converting a jointly held Nevada home into one spouse’s separate property, executed while the other is in long-term care, is not necessarily what it looks like — and the petition and decree that authorised it are court records.
At a Death: One Half Never Enters Probate
NRS 123.250, 111.064, 134.030 and 123.020.
NRS 123.250(1) divides the moment cleanly. An undivided one-half interest in the community property is the property of the surviving spouse and his or her sole separate property. The remaining interest is subject to the decedent’s testamentary disposition or, in the absence of one, goes to the surviving spouse — and it is the only portion subject to administration under title 12 of NRS.
That last clause is the one worth setting against a neighbour. Washington’s RCW 11.02.070 also confirms one-half to the survivor, but then subjects the whole of the community property to probate administration for the payment of community obligations, the award in lieu of homestead and family support. New Mexico takes the same approach at NMSA 1978, 45-3-101(C), where the survivor’s share stays in administration until the claims period expires. Nevada does the opposite: the survivor’s half is out. Subsection 2 adds two carve-outs — the section does not apply to the extent it is inconsistent with NRS chapter 41B, and it does not apply to community property with a right of survivorship.
Survivorship: expressly declared, unilaterally lost
NRS 111.064(1) lets a married couple create estates as tenants in common or in community property by conveyance to themselves, to themselves and others, or from a sole owner to himself or herself and others, in the same manner as a joint tenancy. Subsection 2 sets the two rules that matter. A right of survivorship does not arise when an estate in community property is created in a married couple unless the instrument creating the estate expressly declares that they take as community property with a right of survivorship. And that right is extinguished whenever either spouse, during the marriage, transfers that spouse’s interest in the community property.
Both halves point at the same place. The creation is visible in the words of one recorded instrument, and the destruction is visible in the existence of a later one — executed by one spouse alone, without anybody’s agreement. Arizona reaches a comparable result by a different route, requiring a spouse to record an affidavit terminating right of survivorship under A.R.S. 33-431(D); Nevada needs no special affidavit at all, only a transfer. Reading a Nevada chain of title after a death therefore means reading every instrument in it, not only the one that created the estate.
The intestacy fractions are separate-property fractions
NRS 134.030 states the scope, and it is narrower than it is usually quoted as being: where a decedent dies intestate and has title to any estate which is the separate property of the decedent and which is not otherwise limited by contract, that estate descends and must be distributed, subject to the payment of the decedent’s debts, in the manner provided in NRS 134.040 to 134.120. The community half has already been dealt with by NRS 123.250.
So the familiar fractions are about separate property. NRS 134.040 gives the surviving spouse one-half where the decedent leaves a surviving spouse and only one child or that child’s lawful issue, and one-third where there is more than one child, or a child and the issue of a deceased child. NRS 134.050 covers a decedent with no issue: one-half to the surviving spouse and one-quarter to each surviving parent; and where there is no issue and no parent, one-half of the separate property to the survivor and one-half in equal shares to the decedent’s brothers and sisters. NRS 123.020 closes off the older alternatives entirely: no estate is allowed to one spouse as tenant by curtesy on the death of the other, and no estate in dower is allotted.
Where a Nevada File Stops Adding Up
Six recurring gaps between the instrument and the assumption.
A Deed Signed but Not Acknowledged
NRS 123.230(3) requires both spouses to join in executing the instrument and requires the instrument to be acknowledged by both.
A Purchase Made by One Spouse
NRS 123.230(4) regulates acquisition as well as disposal, and it is the half of the rule people forget.
A Survivorship Quietly Ended
NRS 111.064(2) extinguishes the right whenever either spouse transfers their interest during the marriage — no affidavit needed.
A Plan Paid Without Notice
NRS 123.240 discharges the payor unless a written claim reached the principal place of business or home office first.
A Written Authority Over Earnings
NRS 123.190 turns authorised earnings, and their issues and profits, into the other spouse’s separate property as a gift.
A 123.259 Decree Behind a Transfer
A court-ordered division for an institutionalised spouse can convert community income and resources into separate shares.
Not one of these requires bad faith, and we allege none. Each is a document — a recorded instrument, a court file, a notice letter, a signed authority — that exists with a date or does not exist at all. Establishing which, and when, is the work.
How a Nevada File Is Assembled
Purpose, then the instrument, then the offices, then counsel.
Confirm the Purpose Nevada Law Allows
No Nevada index is searched until a permissible purpose under FCRA, GLBA and DPPA has been confirmed in writing. Where locating someone would put that person at risk, we say no and we say why. Nevada allows a victim of domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual assault or stalking to be assigned a fictitious address under NRS 217.462 to 217.466; a request that appears to be an attempt to pierce that goes no further with us.
Read the Creating Instrument First
Because NRS 111.064(2) makes survivorship depend on express words and NRS 123.230(3) makes a conveyance depend on two acknowledgments, the instrument that created the estate is pulled and read before anything is inferred from a title summary.
Then Everything Recorded After It
County recorder indexes across the counties in play, Secretary of State entity, officer and manager filings, UCC records, titled vehicles and vessels, district court and probate files, address history — obtained openly, never by pretence.
Deliver It County-Stamped
Recorder, document number, recording date and a candid confidence note on every item, in a form a Nevada attorney can put into a probate inventory, a quiet-title action or a claim.
Who Uses This Nevada Research
Instruments from us; character from counsel.
Nevada Probate Counsel
The decedent’s half, identified
Surviving Spouses
Survivorship confirmed or ruled out
Title and Escrow Officers
Both signatures and both acknowledgments
Plan Administrators
Notice under NRS 123.240, dated
Guardians and Elder-Law Counsel
A 123.259 decree located
Business Valuators
Who actually managed the entity
The role changes; the constraint does not. NRS 123.230 turns on whose signature and whose acknowledgment appear on an instrument, NRS 111.064 on the words inside it and every transfer after it, and NRS 123.250 on which half is which. We read those instruments and date them, and there the work ends: characterising property, valuing it and advising on Nevada law all belong to counsel and the court. Finding a person is a separate service — skip tracing — whose Nevada page is finding someone in Nevada.
The Recorded Answer, and Nothing Past It
Nevada wrote a statute that hands our work its own job description. NRS 123.160 makes the absence of a recorded separate-property inventory prima facie evidence, against a good-faith purchaser, that the property is not separate; NRS 123.300 makes an unrecorded marriage contract worthless as to real property except between the two people who signed it. Whether those documents exist is a search, not an argument, and it is the search we run: county recorder indexes across all sixteen counties and Carson City, Secretary of State entity and agent filings, titled vehicles and vessels, address history — each item with the recorder, the document number, the date and a candid note on confidence. A purpose the law permits comes first. We use no pretext, we do not misstate who we are or impersonate anybody to get a document, and we do not open accounts. This is a public-records research firm; there is no lawyer here and no private investigator’s licence. There is no consumer reporting agency here either — our product is not a consumer report and cannot be used to decide a job, a tenancy, a loan or an insurance policy. Whether property is community under NRS 123.220 is counsel’s call. Since 2004.
Nevada Community Property Questions
Answered from NRS chapters 111, 123, 123A and 134 as read at source.
What can one Nevada spouse not do alone?
Six things, and NRS 123.230 lists them. Either spouse may otherwise manage and control community property with the same power of disposition they have over their own separate property, but: neither may devise or bequeath more than one-half of the community property; neither may make a gift of community property without the other’s express or implied consent; neither may sell, convey or encumber community real property unless both join in executing the instrument and both acknowledge it; neither may purchase or contract to purchase community real property unless both join; neither may create a security interest in, or sell, community household goods, furnishings or appliances unless both join; and neither may deal in the assets or goodwill of a business both spouses help manage without the other’s consent. General legal information, not legal advice.
Does the business exception cut both ways?
It has two halves and they point in opposite directions. The last clause of NRS 123.230 provides that where both spouses participate in the management of a business, neither may acquire, purchase, sell, convey or encumber its assets — including its real property and goodwill — without the other’s consent. But where only one spouse participates in management, that spouse may, in the ordinary course of business, do all of those things without the non-participating spouse’s consent. So the same transaction is voidable or unremarkable depending on a fact about who runs the business, and on whether it was ordinary course.
Can a bank or plan administrator just pay one spouse?
Often, yes, and NRS 123.240 says so expressly. Notwithstanding NRS 123.220 and 123.230, where a payment or refund is made to an employee, a former employee, or their beneficiary or estate under a written retirement, death or other employee benefit plan or savings plan, that payment fully discharges the employer and any trustee or insurance company from all adverse claims — unless, before payment, written notice of another person’s claim was received at the employer’s principal place of business in this state, or at the trustee’s or insurer’s home office. The section preserves every claim as between everyone other than the employee and the paying institution. A written notice, delivered to the right address before the money moves, is the whole mechanism.
How does Nevada split a damages award between spouses?
NRS 123.121 segregates it by category when spouses sue jointly. In a personal-injury action, damages for personal injuries and for pain and suffering go to the injured spouse as separate property; damages for loss of comfort and society go to the spouse who suffered that loss; and damages for loss of services and for hospital and medical expenses go to the spouses as community property. Where the action is for injury to property, damages follow the character of the injured property. A single settlement cheque can therefore contain three differently characterised pots, and how it was allocated is a records question.
Can a Nevada spouse turn their earnings into the other spouse’s separate property?
Yes, by a written authority, and the statute treats the result as a gift. NRS 123.190 provides that where a spouse has given written authority to the other to appropriate the first spouse’s earnings to the other’s own use, those earnings — with the issues and profits of them — are deemed a gift from one spouse to the other and become the latter spouse’s separate property. A single signed authorisation therefore moves an income stream, and everything it grows into, permanently across the line.
What happens to Nevada community property when a spouse dies?
NRS 123.250 answers it in two halves. An undivided one-half interest in the community property is the property of the surviving spouse and his or her sole separate property. The remaining interest is subject to the decedent’s testamentary disposition or, absent one, goes to the surviving spouse — and it is the only portion subject to administration under title 12 of NRS. That is a materially different answer from Washington, where RCW 11.02.070 confirms one-half to the survivor but subjects the whole of the community property to probate administration for the payment of community obligations. NRS 123.250 also does not apply to community property with a right of survivorship.
How is Nevada community property with right of survivorship created and lost?
By an express declaration, and by a unilateral act. NRS 111.064(2) provides that a right of survivorship does not arise when an estate in community property is created in a married couple unless the instrument creating the estate expressly declares that they take as community property with a right of survivorship. The same subsection then supplies the exit: that right of survivorship is extinguished whenever either spouse, during the marriage, transfers that spouse’s interest in the community property. One spouse’s recorded transfer therefore ends the survivorship without any agreement, which is why the instrument that created it and every instrument after it both matter.
Do Nevada’s intestacy shares apply to community property?
Not to the community half. NRS 134.030 says the descent-and-distribution scheme in NRS 134.040 to 134.120 governs an intestate decedent’s estate which is the separate property of the decedent. The community half is already handled by NRS 123.250. So the familiar fractions in NRS 134.040 — one-half to the surviving spouse where there is one child or that child’s issue, one-third where there is more than one — are separate-property fractions, and applying them to a community asset produces the wrong answer. NRS 134.050 continues the pattern for a decedent with no issue. Whether a particular asset is community or separate is a question for a Nevada attorney.
What are you not, and what will you not do in Nevada?
We are not a law firm, nobody here holds a private investigator’s licence, and we run no consumer reporting agency — a Nevada file from us is nobody’s consumer report and can settle no hire, no lease, no loan, no policy. On a Nevada file we read recorder indexes, Secretary of State filings, titled property and address history, and we stop there: we do not obtain records by misstating who is asking, and we do not go inside financial accounts. We do not decide whether an asset is community under NRS 123.220 or separate under NRS 123.130, and we do not opine on whether a one-signature deed survives NRS 123.230(3) — those belong to a Nevada attorney and the court. We also decline any request that looks like an effort to locate a person shielded by a fictitious address under NRS 217.462.
Read the Instrument That Created the Estate
In Nevada a survivorship right exists only if an instrument expressly said so, and it disappears the moment either spouse transfers their interest. A community deed needs two signatures and two acknowledgments. A survivor’s half never enters administration at all. Every one of those answers is in a recorded document. Give us the permitted purpose and the counties. You get the recorder’s own answer — document numbers, the dates they were recorded, and a candid confidence note against each one. Where the matter is legitimate, that is ordinarily within 24 hours. A Nevada file opens from the contact page.
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