Why New Hampshire Should Permit Married Couples to Choose Community Property

[Excerpt] “Two states, Alaska and Tennessee, offer married couples the choice of holding their property as separate or community property. Another nine states use community property as the default arrangement. Yet in each of those nine states a couple can opt out of community property rules by agreement. Only in the remaining thirty-nine states are married couples forced to accept separate property.

There is no good reason for this condition to exist. This essay sets forth the advantages of offering married couples the choice of community or separate property and deals with some expected objections to this proposal. Section I details the benefits of choice. Section II examines likely objections and finds those objections insufficient to reject the proposal.”