Background
Scott King and Courtenay Carty were in a romantic relationship from 2015 until 2023 and agreed that they had formed a domestic partnership. Under Alaska law, that term describes unmarried cohabitants who intend to share the fruits of their relationship as though married. After the relationship ended, they asked the superior court to classify and divide residences, businesses, and a fishing boat. The disputed assets included King’s Highbush property in Dillingham, which he had acquired and improved before the relationship, and the Carole Mae, a boat bought during the partnership.
The couple used the Highbush property for Lake Road Lodge, their short-term rental business. They used the boat for a joint charter operation and for family outings. But the boat was titled only to King, and the undisputed evidence showed that he paid the down payment, loan installments, and improvement costs from his separate account. The superior court treated both assets as partnership property because they supported the couple’s businesses and personal life, then ordered King to make an equalization payment as part of a 50/50 division. King appealed those classifications.
The Court’s Holding
The Alaska Supreme Court reversed. It first held that Alaska’s domestic-partnership doctrine applies only to property acquired during the partnership. Property acquired before the partnership begins, like property acquired after it ends, remains governed by ordinary property law. Using a separately owned building for a partnership business does not itself transfer ownership to the partnership. The court illustrated the point with a bakery operated from one partner’s home: the business may use the kitchen without making the other business owner a co-owner of the house. Because King acquired and built the Highbush property years before the relationship began, its later use as a vacation rental did not convert it into partnership property.
The court also extended marital-property tracing principles to domestic partnerships. Tracing classifies an asset by identifying the property used to acquire it: a secondary asset purchased solely with separate property ordinarily remains separate. The court concluded that this approach fits the domestic-partnership doctrine, which asks whether the parties intended to share property as though married while preserving their ability to keep assets separate. When an asset acquired during a partnership is bought exclusively with one partner’s separate funds and titled only in that partner’s name, the court held, it remains separate regardless of other intent factors. The Carole Mae therefore belonged to King despite its business and family uses.
Key Takeaways
- Alaska’s domestic-partnership division rules do not reach property acquired before the partnership began merely because the couple later used it for a shared business.
- Courts must apply tracing when classifying property acquired during a domestic partnership; an asset funded only by one partner’s separate property and titled only to that partner remains separate.
- Shared use, consultation about a purchase, and use in a joint venture do not override clear title and funding evidence under the rule announced here.
Why It Matters
The decision gives Alaska lawyers a more structured framework for unmarried-partner property disputes. Counsel should establish the partnership’s beginning and ending dates, acquisition dates, title history, and the source of every payment before relying on broader evidence about how an asset was used. Business integration alone is not enough to make pre-partnership real estate jointly owned, and courts may distinguish a business’s separately acquired furnishings, cash, or other assets from the land or building where it operates.
The tracing holding is especially consequential for clients who deliberately kept accounts and title separate while sharing a household or operating a business together. Documentary evidence—bank statements, loan records, deeds, titles, and improvement invoices—may control classification even where day-to-day conduct looks highly collaborative. Lawyers advising cohabitants at the start of a venture should document whether the parties mean to contribute an underlying asset, merely permit its use, or share only the income and later-acquired business property. Practitioners should also separate classification from any unraised theory of transmutation or gift; the court did not decide whether Alaska’s marital transmutation doctrine applies to domestic partnerships.