Immune Assets

In New Jersey divorce actions, most assets are subject to equitable distribution. Three statutory exceptions are inheritances, gifts and premarital items. But immunity may also extend to personal injury recoveries. Here, the trial judge erred in awarding half of the wife's personal injury settlement to the husband, especially when he had expressly waived it in the parties' prenuptial agreement, and since the settlement proceeds would ordinarily have been immune from equitable distribution. DeGange v. DeGange, New Jersey, New Jersey App. Div., March 28, 2005.