Louisiana Community Property Laws
Louisiana does not have community property law. It has a matrimonial regime, and community of acquets and gains is the default one. Civil Code article 2325 defines a regime as a system of principles and rules governing the ownership and management of the property of married persons as between themselves and toward third persons; article 2327 makes the community of acquets and gains the legal regime; article 2334 attaches it to Louisiana domicile regardless of where the couple married. Everything downstream — what falls in, who may sign, which patrimony answers for a debt — follows from which regime applies. This page runs in that order. General legal information, not legal advice.
The Short Version
The legal regime is the community of acquets and gains (art. 2327), and it applies to spouses domiciled in Louisiana whatever their domicile when they married and wherever the wedding was (art. 2334). Article 2338 lists what falls into the community, article 2340 presumes that things in a spouse’s possession during the regime are community, and article 2341 defines the separate side — including property bought with separate things, or with separate and community things where the community contribution is inconsequential.
Three provisions do most of the practical work and all three are about documents. Article 2339 makes the fruits of separate property community unless the owning spouse reserves them by a declaration that is filed for registry in the parish conveyance records, after a copy has gone to the other spouse. Article 2347 requires the concurrence of both spouses for community immovables, standing timber, the furniture in the family home, substantially all the assets of a community enterprise and jointly registered movables — and article 2353 makes an act done without a required concurrence a relative nullity. Article 2329 lets the spouses replace the whole regime by matrimonial agreement, needing court approval only to modify or terminate a regime during marriage. Each of those leaves a dated instrument in a parish. Finding and dating those instruments is our part, once there is a purpose the law recognises.
Watch: Louisiana’s Legal Regime
Acquets and gains, and the paper that changes it.
Watch Overview
A System of Rules, Chosen or Inherited
Civil Code articles 2325 to 2334.
Article 2325 is the definition that makes Louisiana read differently from the eight common-law community property states: a matrimonial regime is a system of principles and rules governing the ownership and management of the property of married persons as between themselves and toward third persons. The regime is the unit of analysis. Article 2327 makes the community of acquets and gains the legal regime — the one that applies by operation of law when nothing else has been chosen.
Article 2328 defines the alternative. A matrimonial agreement is a contract establishing a regime of separation of property, or modifying or terminating the legal regime, and the article adds a clause worth noticing: the provisions of the legal regime that have not been excluded or modified by agreement retain their force and effect. A Louisiana matrimonial agreement is therefore rarely a complete substitute; it is an overlay, and reading it means reading it against the articles it did not displace.
When a judge has to be involved, and when not
Article 2329 is widely summarised as requiring judicial approval of matrimonial agreements. Read as enacted, it requires rather less than that. Spouses may enter a matrimonial agreement before or during marriage as to all matters not prohibited by public policy. Court approval is attached to one situation only: an agreement that modifies or terminates a matrimonial regime during marriage, which requires a joint petition and a judicial finding both that it serves the spouses’ best interests and that they understand the governing principles and rules.
Two exceptions sit in the same article. Spouses may subject themselves to the legal regime by matrimonial agreement at any time without court approval. And during the first year after moving into and acquiring a domicile in this state, spouses may enter a matrimonial agreement without court approval. That one-year window is a real, dated fact about a couple’s life — when they became domiciled here — and it decides whether an agreement signed shortly after a move needed a judge at all.
The form, and why it is findable
Article 2331 requires a matrimonial agreement to be made by authentic act or by an act under private signature duly acknowledged by the spouses. An authentic act is a notarial instrument executed before a notary and two witnesses; it is the same formality Louisiana uses for conveyances, and it produces the same kind of paper trail. Combined with article 2334’s domicile rule, the practical question on any Louisiana file is a pair of dated facts: when did these people become domiciled in Louisiana, and does an authentic act exist that changed the default.
What Falls In, and the Declaration That Pulls Fruits Out
Civil Code articles 2338 to 2344.
Article 2338 catalogues the community: property acquired during the regime through the effort, skill or industry of either spouse; property acquired with community things, or with community and separate things unless article 2341 sends it the other way; property donated to the spouses jointly; the natural and civil fruits of community property; damages awarded for loss or injury to a community thing; and all other property not classified by law as separate. Article 2340 adds the presumption, and it is a possession-based one: things in the possession of a spouse during the existence of the regime are presumed community, and either spouse may prove otherwise.
Article 2341 sets out the separate side, and one limb of it is unusually precise: property acquired with separate things, or with separate and community things when the value of the community things is inconsequential in comparison with the value of the separate things used. The article also makes separate any damages awarded to a spouse for breach of contract against the other spouse, or for loss from fraud or bad faith in the other spouse’s management of community property. Article 2341.1 handles undivided interests: a spouse’s undivided interest that is separate under 2341 stays separate regardless of later acquisitions of other undivided interests, of the source of improvements, or of who managed the thing.
The declaration, and where it has to be filed
Article 2339 is the article a Louisiana file most often turns on. The natural and civil fruits of a spouse’s separate property are community property, and so are minerals produced from or attributable to a separate asset and the bonuses, delay rentals, royalties and shut-in payments arising from mineral leases. In an oil-and-gas state that is not a marginal rule.
A spouse may reserve them, and the article prescribes exactly how. The reservation is made by a declaration in an authentic act or in an act under private signature duly acknowledged, and a copy shall be provided to the other spouse prior to filing of the declaration. As to the fruits of immovables the declaration is effective when the copy has been provided and the declaration is filed for registry in the conveyance records of the parish where the immovable is located; as to fruits of movables, when the copy has been provided and it is filed for registry in the parish where the declarant is domiciled. Practitioners call the result a declaration of paraphernality; the article’s own words are the authority, and the operative facts are a parish, a registry and two dates.
Moving a thing across the line on purpose
Articles 2343 and 2343.1 govern deliberate transfers between spouses. A donation by one spouse to the other of an undivided interest in a community thing transforms that interest into the donee’s separate property, and unless the act of donation says otherwise an equal interest of the donee is also transformed, along with the fruits and minerals. Going the other way, article 2343.1 lets a spouse transfer separate property to the community with a stipulation that it shall be part of the community — and requires form: a transfer by onerous title must be in writing, and a transfer by gratuitous title must be by authentic act. Article 2344 splits personal-injury damages, making them separate but sending back to the community the portion attributable to community expenses and to lost community earnings.
Whose Signature a Louisiana Act Needs
Articles 2346 to 2355, transaction by transaction.
| The act | Whose concurrence Louisiana requires | Article |
|---|---|---|
| Managing, controlling or disposing of community property generally | Either spouse acting alone, unless the law provides otherwise. | 2346 |
| Alienating, encumbering or leasing a community immovable | Both spouses. Also standing, cut or fallen timber; furniture and furnishings while in the family home; substantially all the assets of a community enterprise; movables registered in both names. Relative nullity if not | 2347, 2353 |
| Donating community property to a third person | Both spouses — except a usual or customary gift of a value commensurate with the spouses’ economic position. | 2349 |
| Alienating the movables of a community enterprise | The sole manager alone, unless the movables are issued in the other spouse’s name or the law requires concurrence. | 2350 |
| Managing or encumbering a partnership or LLC interest | The spouse who is the partner or the member, exclusively. | 2352 |
| Acting when the other spouse will not or cannot concur | The court, in a summary proceeding, on a showing of best interest of the family plus arbitrary refusal, incapacity, commitment, imprisonment, temporary absence or absent-person status. | 2355 |
Article 2354 sits behind the whole table: a spouse is liable for any loss or damage caused by fraud or bad faith in the management of community property. Every row above resolves into a document held by a parish clerk of court, a notary or the Secretary of State’s commercial registry. We locate and date those; a Louisiana attorney decides what follows.
Which Patrimony Answers for the Debt
Civil Code articles 2345 and 2357 to 2367.
During the regime the rule is wide. Article 2345 provides that a separate or a community obligation may be satisfied from community property and from the separate property of the spouse who incurred it. Article 2361 then presumes that all obligations incurred by a spouse during the regime are community obligations, except as article 2363 provides.
Article 2360 defines the community obligation: one incurred during the regime for the common interest of the spouses or for the interest of the other spouse. Article 2363 defines its opposite — an obligation incurred before the regime, or during it but not for the common interest of the spouses or the interest of the other spouse; and, in its second paragraph, an obligation resulting from an intentional wrong or incurred for a spouse’s separate property, to the extent it does not benefit both spouses, the family or the other spouse. Article 2362 deems an alimentary obligation imposed by law a community obligation.
After the regime ends
Article 2357 is the provision creditors should read first. An obligation incurred by a spouse before or during the regime may be satisfied after termination from the property of the former community and from the separate property of the spouse who incurred it. The same rule reaches attorney’s fees and costs in a divorce action incurred between the filing of the petition and the judgment that terminates the regime. And it adds a sanction with teeth: if a spouse disposes of former community property for a purpose other than satisfying community obligations, that spouse is liable for all obligations incurred by the other spouse up to the value of that community property. The third paragraph offers the way out — a spouse may by written act assume responsibility for one-half of each community obligation incurred by the other, and then dispose of community property without incurring further responsibility. What a Louisiana judgment can then reach is set out on our page for Louisiana asset exemptions from creditors.
Reimbursement, and its ceiling
Articles 2364 through 2367 run the accounting between the spouses, and they are consistently written in halves. Where community property was used to satisfy a separate obligation, the other spouse is entitled to reimbursement for one-half of the amount or value the property had when it was used (art. 2364). Where separate property satisfied a community obligation, that spouse is owed one-half (art. 2365). Where community property was used for the acquisition, use, improvement or benefit of a spouse’s separate property, one-half again (art. 2366) — and buildings and plantings made on separate ground with community funds belong to the owner of the ground. Article 2367 reverses the flow for separate property spent on the community.
Article 2365 carries the ceiling: the liability of a spouse who owes reimbursement is limited to the value of that spouse’s share of all community property after deduction of all community obligations — unless the obligation was for the ordinary and customary expenses of the marriage or for the support, maintenance or education of children, in which case reimbursement is owed regardless of the value of that share. Article 2358 adds the timing rule: a reimbursement claim may be asserted only after termination of the regime, unless the law provides otherwise. Every one of these is an arithmetic exercise over dated transactions, which is why a Louisiana reimbursement fight is a records project before it is an argument.
Termination, Co-ownership and the Surviving Spouse
Civil Code articles 2356, 2369.1 to 2369.8, 889 and 890.
Article 2356 lists the causes: death or a judgment of declaration of death, a declaration of the nullity of the marriage, a judgment of divorce or of separation of property, or a matrimonial agreement that terminates the community. What follows termination is co-ownership, not limbo. Article 2369.1 applies the co-ownership provisions to former community property, and article 2369.2 gives each spouse an undivided one-half interest in it and in its fruits and products.
Article 2369.3 imposes a duty most people do not expect: a spouse has a duty to preserve and to manage prudently former community property under that spouse’s control, in a manner consistent with the mode of use of that property immediately prior to termination, and is answerable for damage caused by fault, default or neglect. A rental that was let before the divorce and left empty afterwards is not a neutral choice under that article. Article 2369.8 then guarantees the exit: a spouse has the right to demand partition of former community property at any time, a contrary agreement is absolutely null, and where the spouses cannot agree either may demand judicial partition under R.S. 9:2801, which the article names.
Death, and the usufruct
Louisiana’s answer at death is the one that has no counterpart in any other state on this site. Article 889 covers the simple case: if the deceased leaves no descendants, the surviving spouse succeeds to the decedent’s share of the community property. Article 890 covers the other: where the deceased is survived by descendants, the surviving spouse has a usufruct over the decedent’s share of the community to the extent the decedent has not disposed of it by testament, and that usufruct terminates when the surviving spouse dies or remarries, whichever occurs first.
So the survivor may hold the use and the fruits of a half they do not own, on a condition — remarriage — that is itself a recorded public fact. Naked ownership sits with the descendants throughout. For anyone reading a Louisiana chain of title after a death, that means the conveyance records and the marriage records have to be read together, and the date of a subsequent marriage can matter as much as the date of the first death.
Where a Louisiana File and the Registry Diverge
Six recurring gaps, none of which requires an accusation.
A Declaration Never Filed
Article 2339 makes a reservation of fruits effective only on filing for registry in the right parish, after a copy went to the other spouse.
An Act Missing a Concurrence
Article 2353 makes an alienation, encumbrance or lease done without a required concurrence a relative nullity — visible in the recorded act itself.
A Matrimonial Agreement Signed in the First Year
Article 2329 lets a couple who have just acquired a Louisiana domicile agree without court approval, so the date of the move decides the instrument’s validity.
A Community Enterprise Quietly Emptied
Article 2350 lets a sole manager alienate the movables of a community enterprise alone, while article 2347 still governs substantially all of its assets.
Mineral Payments Left Out
Article 2339 names bonuses, delay rentals, royalties and shut-in payments explicitly, and they are recorded against particular tracts.
A Remarriage Nobody Traced
Article 890 terminates the surviving spouse’s usufruct on death or remarriage, whichever comes first.
None of these needs bad faith and we allege none. Each is a document that either reached a parish registry with a date on it or did not, which is exactly the comparison we run: what the clerk of court, the notarial archives and the commercial registry actually hold, set against what has been asserted.
How a Louisiana File Is Assembled
Purpose, then the parish, then the dates, then counsel.
A Recognised Purpose, Before the First Parish Search
We fix the lawful purpose under FCRA, GLBA and DPPA before opening a parish index. If a request looks like an effort to locate a person who left to be safe, we decline it and explain why. Louisiana’s Secretary of State operates an Address Confidentiality Program that substitutes an address for survivors of abuse, sexual assault and stalking, and we will not be used to work around it.
Fix Domicile and the Regime
Article 2334 attaches the legal regime to Louisiana domicile, and article 2329’s one-year window runs from the acquisition of that domicile, so the move date is established from filed documents before anything is classified.
Work the Parish, Then the State
Clerk of court conveyance and mortgage records parish by parish, declarations filed for registry under article 2339, the Secretary of State’s commercial registry, UCC filings, titled movables, judgment records and address history.
Return It Parish-Stamped
Every item comes back with the parish, the registry or filing date, the instrument reference and a candid note on what could not be corroborated, shaped for a Louisiana attorney to use in a partition, a claim or a succession.
Who Uses a Louisiana Record
Instruments from us; classification from counsel.
Louisiana Family Counsel
Regime and declaration traced
Succession Attorneys
Usufruct and naked ownership mapped
Notaries and Title Examiners
Concurrence checked act by act
Creditors After Termination
Article 2357 exposure evidenced
Mineral and Land Departments
Royalty character documented
Forensic Accountants
Reimbursement inputs, dated
The role changes; the constraint does not. Article 2339 turns on a filing, article 2347 on a signature, article 2357 on a date. We locate those and stamp them, and there we stop — no classification, no reimbursement arithmetic, no opinion on Louisiana law. Where a spouse or an absent person has to be found before article 2355 relief can even be sought, that is skip tracing, and the Louisiana version is on our page for finding someone in Louisiana.
Our Part of a Louisiana Matter, and the Part That Is Not Ours
Louisiana puts the decisive documents in the parish. A declaration reserving the fruits of separate property is effective only when it is filed for registry in the conveyance records under Civil Code article 2339; a matrimonial agreement is an authentic act under article 2331. So the parish clerk of court is where a Louisiana file is built: conveyance and mortgage records, the Secretary of State’s commercial registry, UCC filings, titled movables and address history, each returned with its parish, its registry date and a plain note about what remains unconfirmed. A purpose the law recognises is established before anything is searched. Nothing is obtained by pretext: we do not misstate who is asking or why, we impersonate no one, and we do not look inside anyone’s accounts. We are a public-records research firm; we are not avocats and we practise no law. A parish file from us is nobody’s consumer report and this is no consumer reporting agency, so no employer, landlord, lender or insurer may lean on it to turn a person down. Classification under articles 2338 and 2341, and every reimbursement question under articles 2364 to 2367, belong to your Louisiana counsel. Records work since 2004.
Louisiana Community Property Questions
Answered from the Civil Code as read at legis.la.gov.
Does Louisiana community property depend on where we married?
No. Civil Code article 2334 says the legal regime of community of acquets and gains applies to spouses domiciled in this state, regardless of their domicile at the time of marriage or the place of celebration of the marriage. A couple who married in Texas and moved to Shreveport are under the Louisiana regime; a couple who married in Baton Rouge and moved to Georgia are not. Article 2325 frames the whole subject: a matrimonial regime is a system of principles and rules governing the ownership and management of the property of married persons as between themselves and toward third persons. General legal information, not legal advice.
Do Louisiana spouses need a judge to sign off on a matrimonial agreement?
Only sometimes, and the common statement that a judge must approve all of them is not what article 2329 says. Spouses may enter a matrimonial agreement before or during marriage as to anything not prohibited by public policy. Court approval is required for one thing: an agreement that modifies or terminates a matrimonial regime during marriage, which needs a joint petition and a finding that it serves the spouses’ best interests and that they understand the governing principles and rules. Two carve-outs follow in the same article. Spouses may subject themselves to the legal regime by agreement at any time without court approval. And during the first year after moving into and acquiring a domicile in Louisiana, they may enter a matrimonial agreement without court approval at all. Article 2331 sets the form: an authentic act, or an act under private signature duly acknowledged by the spouses.
Is the rent from my separate property community in Louisiana?
By default, yes. Article 2339 makes the natural and civil fruits of a spouse’s separate property community property, and expressly includes minerals produced from or attributable to a separate asset, plus bonuses, delay rentals, royalties and shut-in payments arising from mineral leases. A spouse may reserve them as separate, but only through the mechanism the article specifies: a declaration in an authentic act or an act under private signature duly acknowledged, with a copy provided to the other spouse before the declaration is filed. For fruits of immovables it becomes effective when the copy is given and the declaration is filed for registry in the conveyance records of the parish where the immovable sits; for fruits of movables, in the parish where the declarant is domiciled.
What is community property in Louisiana, and what is presumed?
Article 2338 lists the community: property acquired during the regime through the effort, skill or industry of either spouse; property acquired with community things, or with community and separate things unless article 2341 classifies it as separate; property donated to the spouses jointly; the natural and civil fruits of community property; damages for loss or injury to a community thing; and all other property not classified by law as separate. Article 2340 supplies the presumption — things in the possession of a spouse during the regime are presumed community, and either spouse may prove they are separate. Article 2341 defines the separate side, including property acquired with separate things or with separate and community things where the value of the community things is inconsequential in comparison.
Can one Louisiana spouse sell the house alone?
No. Article 2346 gives each spouse acting alone the power to manage, control or dispose of community property unless the law says otherwise, and article 2347 is that law: the concurrence of both spouses is required for the alienation, encumbrance or lease of community immovables, of standing, cut or fallen timber, of furniture or furnishings while located in the family home, of all or substantially all of the assets of a community enterprise, and of movables issued or registered in the names of the spouses jointly. Subsection B adds harvesting community timber. Article 2353 supplies the consequence: where concurrence is required and not obtained, the act is a relative nullity unless the other spouse renounced the right to concur.
What if a spouse refuses to sign, or cannot be found?
Article 2355 provides for it directly. A spouse may be authorised by the court, in a summary proceeding, to act without the other’s concurrence on showing that the action is in the best interest of the family and that the other spouse arbitrarily refuses to concur, or that concurrence cannot be obtained because of physical incapacity, mental incompetence, commitment, imprisonment, temporary absence, or because the other spouse is an absent person. Several of those are factual questions about where a person is, which is the point at which a documented locate becomes relevant — and, equally, the point at which we check why the locate is being asked for.
Which property answers for a Louisiana debt?
During the regime, article 2345 is broad: a separate or community obligation may be satisfied from community property and from the separate property of the spouse who incurred it. Article 2361 presumes that obligations incurred during the regime are community, except as article 2363 provides — and 2363 makes separate an obligation incurred before the regime, or during it but not for the common interest of the spouses or the interest of the other spouse, together with obligations from an intentional wrong or incurred for a spouse’s separate property to the extent they do not benefit both spouses, the family or the other spouse. Article 2360 defines the community obligation as one incurred for the common interest of the spouses or for the interest of the other spouse.
What happens to the community when a Louisiana spouse dies?
Article 2356 lists death among the causes that terminate the legal regime. What happens next depends on descendants. Article 889 provides that if the deceased leaves no descendants, the surviving spouse succeeds to the decedent’s share of the community property outright. Article 890 covers the other case: where the deceased is survived by descendants, the surviving spouse has a usufruct over the decedent’s share of the community to the extent the decedent has not disposed of it by testament, and that usufruct terminates when the surviving spouse dies or remarries, whichever comes first. Article 2357 then keeps creditors in the picture after termination: an obligation incurred before or during the regime may be satisfied afterwards from the property of the former community and from the separate property of the spouse who incurred it.
What are the limits on what you will research in Louisiana?
Hard ones. We read the parish conveyance and mortgage records, the Secretary of State’s registry, UCC filings, titled movables and address history — and nothing else. Whether a thing is community under article 2338 or separate under article 2341, whether an obligation is community under article 2360 or separate under article 2363, and what any reimbursement is worth, are legal conclusions for Louisiana counsel and the court. We never misrepresent our identity or our reason for asking, and we never access account contents. This firm holds no private investigator’s licence and gives no legal advice. Neither is it a consumer reporting agency, so a Louisiana file from us is nobody’s consumer report and may not settle a hire, a lease, a loan or a policy. We refuse any request that appears aimed at finding someone who is hiding from violence, including a participant in Louisiana’s Address Confidentiality Program.
Find the Act, Then Read the Regime
In Louisiana the answer is usually an instrument: a matrimonial agreement in authentic form, a declaration filed for registry under article 2339, a conveyance missing a concurrence article 2347 required. Name the parish and the purpose the law recognises. What returns is the conveyance and mortgage record with its registry dates, plus an honest account of the gaps we could not close. Where the matter is legitimate that generally happens within 24 hours. The contact page starts a Louisiana file.
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