Property Split Calculator

In Germany most married couples without a marriage contract automatically live in the statutory regime of the community of accrued gains. That sounds like a shared pot but is the opposite: during the marriage each remains the owner of their assets. Only at divorce is the account settled - and not the entire assets, only the accrued gain, that is the increase in value each achieved during the marriage. Whoever gained more pays the other half the difference. The calculator makes this logic tangible.

The calculation starts with the initial estate: what did you have on the wedding day? Then the final estate: what do you have on the cut-off date, that is when the divorce petition is served? The difference is your accrued gain (Section 1373 BGB). The calculator lets you capture assets cleanly by category - real estate, bank deposits, securities, vehicles, life insurance, business holdings and other - each with an initial and final value, so nothing slips through.

An often-overlooked point is the privileged acquisition under Section 1374 para. 2 BGB: inheritances and gifts you received during the marriage are added to the initial estate and therefore do not count as accrued gain. That is fair, because this increase in value has nothing to do with the marital effort. The calculator has a dedicated field for it, so your inherited family home is not accidentally treated as shared gain.

Debts are handled correctly too. Liabilities at the start and end of the marriage flow into the respective estate, and since the property-law reform even a negative initial estate is possible - whoever entered the marriage with debts and paid them off has a correspondingly higher accrued gain. The calculator accounts for this and flags when a negative initial estate is present.

The cap under Section 1378 para. 2 BGB matters: the equalization claim is limited to the existing net final estate of the party owing equalization. Nobody has to equalize more than actually exists at the end. The calculator checks this automatically and shows whether the claim was capped and what it would originally have been. Optionally you can also run a modified accrued gain with a different quota, if you have such an agreement.

So you even know what the other party has, there is the duty of disclosure under Section 1379 BGB: both partners must disclose their initial and final estate and provide evidence. The calculator explains this duty and warns about disloyal asset dispositions (Section 1375 para. 2 BGB), that is secretly moving assets away before the divorce. You can save the result as a PDF or copy it. As always: this is a solid orientation, but real-estate valuation, business valuation and the precise cut-off date belong in expert hands.