The legal property regime ends when one of the spouses files for divorce. The property division case, as a rule, aims at the equal sharing of the property acquired by the spouses in the marriage union.

• Possibility of company shares being personal property

In order to be able to share company shares in property sharing cases, first of all, the date of acquisition of company shares should be checked. If the company shares are acquired before the date of marriage or 01.01.2002, they will be the personal property of the spouse and cannot be subject to property division. According to the Turkish Civil Code, since the income of personal property is acquired property (profit in companies), the other spouse has the right to claim on the income of the company. However, the spouses may decide that the income of personal property will not be included in the acquired goods with the property regime agreement they have made. In this case, the other spouse will not be able to claim on the income of the company.
• Possibility of company shares being acquired property

If the acquisition date of the company shares is after the date of marriage and 01.01.2002, the company shares should be considered as acquired property. Unless the spouse who owns the company shares can prove that the price of these shares was paid from their personal property, the company’s share value will enter into liquidation as acquired property. According to the Supreme Court decisions, the value of the company’s shares should be determined by looking at the company’s data, and the appropriate and reasonable release values ​​of the company in the market. The release value is the amount of money the company can hold in the free market at the time of liquidation.
As a result, if the company’s shares are personal property, the non-shareholder spouse may request a participation receivable greater than half of the profit share of the company. If the company shares are acquired property, the share value will be determined over the free market value, but the company’s assets will not be included in the liquidation. For example, while the participation receivable is calculated in terms of the company in which the shareholder spouse is a partner in the marriage union, the calculation of the participation receivable will not be made in terms of the company’s assets, which will cause duplicate collections.
• Can a precautionary measure be placed on company shares?

There is a high probability that the spouses will smuggle property before or during the divorce case. Although these transfers made for the purpose of smuggling are invalid, these transfers prolong the process. In order to prevent prolongation and complexity of the process, precautionary measures can be placed on the company shares of the shareholder spouse. However, since it is not possible to impose a measure on the company shares in the divorce case, a separate property sharing lawsuit should be filed and a precautionary measure should be requested for the company shares of the shareholder spouse in this case.
Stj.At. Rumeysa Özge Uzkan