Who owns what in a marriage in Lesotho?

In the Roman-Dutch tradition a civil marriage has traditionally been in community of property, with everything the spouses own pooled, unless the couple sign an antenuptial contract before the wedding. Several countries have changed this by statute. Customary marriages follow the rules of the community.

A marriage in community of property is divided between the spouses, usually equally, and a marriage out of community leaves each with their own, subject in some countries to a court's power to redistribute.

An antenuptial contract, usually registered before a notary or in a deeds registry before the wedding, can exclude the community of property.

Property from before the marriage, gifts and inheritances generally stay personal.

The country has its own rules on which law governs a marriage and its property. Get local advice if one spouse is a foreigner, if the couple live abroad, or if the marriage was celebrated under customary or religious law.

• In customary and Islamic marriages a man may in some countries have more than one wife, which changes how property is shared; a civil marriage is monogamous. Which kind of marriage a couple have therefore matters more than anything else.

Lesotho belongs to the Mixed: civil and common law family. Family law grows out of the legal tradition, so it helps to know how the system works.

Read the Lesotho legal-system profile in the Legal Families Atlas →
Can a foreigner buy property in Lesotho? →

• JuriGlobe, University of Ottawa: world legal systems
• World Bank: Women, Business and the Law (country data on marriage and property)