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| - Social media posts are claiming US President Donald Trump has changed divorce law so that property can not be divided equally between two divorcing parties, but no such change has been implemented at the time of writing.
A Facebook post shares a photo of President Trump at his desk, and says: “TRUMP CHANGES DIVORCE LAW…No 50% Property Share.” It then adds: “President Trump has broke [sic] the divorce law that is said to have been tormenting men in the US.”
But President Trump has not made any such change to how divorce works at the federal level in the US. He has reportedly signed more than 60 executive orders at the time of writing, but none of these are about reforms to divorce law. We could also not find any White House statements or briefings concerning property distribution after divorce.
While Vice President JD Vance has previously opposed no-fault divorces, there are no credible reports or records of any changes to US divorce law implemented at the time of writing.
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How is property distributed under current US divorce law?
If a divorcing couple is unable to agree on how “marital property”, which generally includes real estate and other assets purchased by the couple while married, is distributed, a judge will divide the property according to rules that vary between US states.
Most states follow the equitable distribution rule that means upon divorce all marital property is divided by what a court decides is “fair allocation”, rather than necessarily equally. Factors that may be considered include the length of a marriage, the value of the marital property, each spouse’s contribution to the marital property and the economic circumstances of each spouse upon the division of property, among others.
Nine states are known as community property states. The exact rules between these states vary widely, but generally speaking, property acquired by both during the marriage is usually split equally between spouses, though not in all states. These community property states are Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.
In all cases, a judge ultimately approves how property is being divided according to that state’s laws.
We’ve written about other false claims about executive orders passed by President Trump during his second term, including that he’d removed capital gains tax on US cryptocurrencies and cut funding to cities that “encourage LGBTQ activism”. You can find more of our work checking claims relating to the US on our website.
Before sharing information you see online it’s important to consider whether it has been corroborated by trusted and reliable sources. Our toolkits can help you do this.
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