Did President Donald Trump alter or change divorce law in the U.S., ending a mandatory 50-50 equal asset split for divorced couples as claimed by viral posts and videos? No, that's not true: Splitting assets and dividing property under U.S. divorce law is regulated on a state-by-state basis and not at the federal level. There have been no news reports about any federal initiatives or announcements from The White House about changing those rules at the time of writing.
An example of the viral claims making the rounds could be seen in this X post (archived here) published on February 26, 2025. It contained a video with a caption that read:
Donald Trump Just Changed the U.S. Divorce Law: The End of the 50-50 Asset Split for Divorced Couples
Here is an embedded copy of the video (archived here):
Trump changing the Divorce laws in the U.S.
-- The Forgotten 'Man' 👨⚖️ (@SamSiff) February 26, 2025
A tight slap on feminist organizations & a tight slap on all women who extract money and property in the name of child support and alimony.
A great change coming!
No more free Alimony/Property to Wives!!They need to earn.
No more... pic.twitter.com/Tn8CeQNq4y
A transcript of the voiceover spoken in the video is below:
Donald Trump just changed the US divorce law. The end of the 50-50 asset split for divorced couples. Since the beginning of his term, Donald Trump has implemented drastic reforms. One of the most controversial changes he is considering concerns divorce laws, which he believes are unfair to men in the country. Trump has stated that he wants to revise the current legislation, arguing that it allows women to become wealthy after a divorce simply because they married a rich man. Just because you married a wealthy man doesn't mean you should walk away with half of his fortune and become a rich woman after the divorce, Trump declared.
The president believes that divorces in the United States have turned into a profitable business for women and it's time to put an end to it. According to his new proposal, if a woman needs financial support after a divorce, her ex-husband will be allowed to lend her up to $100,000. As long as she can prove she genuinely needs it. For Trump, this sum may seem insignificant for a wealthy man, but it should be enough for his ex-wife since she did not earn that money herself. If I have a fortune of 50 million dollars, I'm not going to give away $25 million after a divorce. He insisted, "It's my money.
I worked hard for it. It doesn't matter if we were married for 6 years or 25 or even if we have kids. If the woman can't afford to raise them, she should leave them with me, he added. He also emphasized that marrying a successful person should not mean automatically gaining access to a large portion of their wealth after a breakup. These statements have sparked intense national debate between family law attorneys and women's rights groups. What do you think about it?
According to Justia.com (archived here), in the U.S. the division of property after a divorce if no agreement can be reached is handled on a state-by-state basis:
If there is no pre-existing arrangement for property division, the divorcing spouses can negotiate a marital settlement agreement. This allows them to determine who gets what after the divorce without relying on a court.
If the spouses cannot reach an agreement, however, a court must divide their property under the laws of their state. Forty-one states and Washington, D.C. use a system known as equitable distribution. This means that a court will divide property in a way that is fair under the circumstances. Many equitable distribution states provide a statutory list of factors that a court must consider in dividing property, while other states have relied on courts to determine these factors. "Fair" does not necessarily mean "equal." In practice, though, courts often find that an equitable distribution is an even or nearly even split.
The nine remaining states are known as community property states. While this is a relatively small number, it accounts for a quarter of the U.S. population. The community property states are Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin. Under a community property system, most income, assets, and debts accumulated during a marriage are considered jointly held by both spouses. In some community property states, such as California, community property generally must be divided equally between the spouses in a divorce. Other community property states take a more flexible approach. For example, Texas does not require community property to be equally divided. States like Arizona and Nevada strongly favor a 50/50 split but give courts some discretion to deviate if needed.
A search of Google News for news reports mentioning "Trump" and "divorce law" (archived here) did not bring up any stories mentioning upcoming or recent changes made to divorce law by the Trump Administration. It did however bring up several fact checks saying there hadn't been any, for example from Full Fact and FactCheckHub.
Lead Stories also searched the website of The White House for mentions of "divorce" (archived here). The only mention of that word was in a transcript of a Hannity interview (archived here) with Elon Musk and Donald Trump in which the interviewer asked a question about people who would want to see Musk and Trump get a metaphorical "divorce":
Q And now I see they want you two to start -- they want a divorce. They want you two to start hating each other. And they try -- "Oh, President Elon Musk," for example. You do know that they're doing that to you?
THE PRESIDENT: Oh, I see it all the time. They tried it, then they stopped. That wasn't -- they have many different things of hatred.
