Posts Tagged ‘Arizona’
Today, the level of white-collar crime is on its highest. White-collar crime basically refers to a crime committed by person of high ranking positions in the course of their job. White-collar crime usually comes in the form of a threat, bribery, unfair promotions, deception, unfair practices, frauds and cheating in accounts, documents, stock etc. This is in contrast with the crimes known as blue-collar crimes – rape, murder, and homicide, among others. Of all these types of white-collar crime, nothing is more prevalent today than mortgage fraud.
Because of the cunning that most white-collar criminals have, it is typically hard to nip it in the bud and would usually only go to court when millions of dollars have already been carted away by the criminal or criminals involved. There have also been cases wherein people have committed mortgage fraud without intentionally doing so.
One of the things that you need to keep in mind is that mortgage fraud can come in two forms – as fraud for profit and fraud for housing. The former involves revolving equity and inflating the value of properties. Issuing loans based on fictitious properties is also considered to be a fraud for profit. Fraud for housing or fraud for property, on the other hand, is done in order for the borrower to acquire or maintain ownership of a property. In this case, the borrower usually doctors his income as well as employment history in order to get approval for loan.
There are two different laws that decide property ownership in the event of death or divorce. They are known as community property and common law. Common law is also known as separate property. The list of community property states only consists of nine states.
The majority of these states are out west. Community property means that anything acquired during the marriage belongs equally to the husband and wife. If the husband and wife get a divorce, they will be required to split their assets they earned while they were together right down the middle.
The states that follow the community property law are Arizona, Nevada, California, New Mexico, Idaho, Washington, Louisiana, Wisconsin and Texas. All of these states agree that everything earned during the marriage should be divided equally at the time of a divorce.
Unless an estate plan is clearly written out and notarized, each state will decide exactly who gets what in the even of a split between the couple. While they follow the same general rule, the courts will decide exactly how their assets will be divided if rules between spouses are not written clearly.
Alaska also falls under the list of community property states but has a little more leniency when it comes to the law. The couple can decide what property they will consider separate and what they will consider community. If someone lives in one of the nine community property states listed above, they have to be careful with any gifts or inheritance they may obtain during the marriage. If the individual decides they want to keep something that is given specifically to them, they need to put it in a separate account that is under their name only.