McCourt Divorce to Decide Who Owns the Dodgers
Los Angeles, a wealthy couple with ownership of a baseball team, an alleged affair, divorce, forged documents...it's all in the McCourt case happening in Los Angeles. It looks like Tarnished Twenty is going to start off strong this week.
Jamie and Frank McCourt met at Georgetown in 1979. Jamie practiced family law and Frank worked in real estate. The two eventually became extremely wealthy buying property in the Boston area. Eventually they became interested in buying a baseball team and purchased the Dodgers. However, things fell apart in recent years. Before the McCourt divorce, they were allegedly living above even their means and Jamie was allegedly having an affair with a former Dodgers employee.
Attorneys for former Dodger CEO Jamie McCourt will argue that their client is entitled to a portion of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Her husband, Frank McCourt says the Dodgers are his alone.
The McCourt divorce case hinges on a postnuptial martial agreement signed in 2004, shortly after the purchasing the Dodgers for a cool $430 million. Frank McCourt contends that the agreement gave him the team, the stadium and the surrounding land and that Jamie McCourt receives six high priced houses. Jamie contends that she would never have given up ownership of the Dodgers and that the documents are forgeries, The Associated Press reports.
California as well as nine other states are community property states. In such states all amounts earned through the community labor of married California residents are presumptively community property, which means that they are owned together, equally, by the husband and wife. All items acquired through gift, bequest or devise to an individual spouse remain that spouse's separate property.
However, community property only applies in the absence of a martial agreement, such as the case of the postnuptial at issue here. So in this case, it is up to the judge to figure out what to do between applying the community property standard, or what is in the postnuptial agreement, or some compromise. There also remains a good chance that, ultimately, the McCourt's will decide to settle.
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