When and how property is “acquired” is crucial to classification. The cases have developed the view of acquisition as an ongoing, dynamic process of obtaining equity (net value) in an item of property when or as payment is made.
Regardless of when title to an item of property is taken, the property is acquired as it is being paid for. The marital unit shares, at equitable distribution, in increases in the value of separate property that the marital unit has proportionately acquired in its own right. The increase attributable to the marital unit is traced using the “source of funds” methodology that has now been exhaustively described in the case law.
