Property and pecuniary rights owned by a spouse before marriage and that acquired by him or her afterwards by gift, bequest, devise, descent, or inheritance, with the rents, issues and profits thereof, shall not be subject to the debts or contracts of his or her spouse, and he or she may manage, lease, sell, convey, encumber or devise by will such property without his or her spouse joining in such management, alienation or encumbrance, as fully, and to the same extent or in the same manner as though he or she were unmarried.
RCW 26.16.010
Separate property of spouse.
Applied in 59 court decisions — leading case 125 Wash. 2d 865 - In Re the Marriage of Short (1995)
Most recently applied in Copper Leaf, Llc, V. Ace Paving Co. Inc. (July 2024)
2008 c 6 s 602; Code 1881 s 2408; RRS s 6890
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Washington State Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Washington statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.