Definition
Régime en communauté (also spelled régime en communaute) is a French law matrimonial property regime under which spouses hold property in common during marriage. Under this system, assets acquired before or during the marriage — and in some configurations, all property of both spouses — are treated as belonging jointly to the marital community rather than to each spouse individually. Upon dissolution of the marriage, whether by death or otherwise, the community property is divided between the surviving or separated parties according to the governing rules of the regime.
The system stands in contrast to the régime dotal, under which a wife's dowry (dot) is administered by the husband but remains legally separate and returnable upon dissolution, and to regimes of complete separation of property, under which each spouse retains exclusive ownership of their own assets throughout the marriage.
Common Language
No entry is warranted here. Régime en communauté is pure legal and civil law terminology with no meaningful common English counterpart. The phrase does not appear in ordinary English usage, and its French components (régime, communauté) do not carry a legal meaning distinct from a common meaning — they simply do not carry any meaning in English lay usage that would generate confusion.
Common Confusion
Régime en communauté is sometimes conflated with community property as that term is understood in American law. The concepts are related — American community property law is historically descended from Spanish and French civil law traditions, including communauté-based regimes — but they are not identical. The French system encompasses multiple variants (full community, reduced community, universal community) operating within a coherent civil law framework of marital contracts. American community property, as applied across the community property states, reflects a common law system's selective adoption of civil law principles, with significant jurisdictional variation and without the same doctrinal structure of marital agreements. Researchers should not assume that a historical source's description of régime en communauté maps directly onto the community property rules of any American jurisdiction.
Régime en communauté should also be distinguished from régime dotal. Under the dotal regime, the wife's dot is placed under the husband's administration but does not become common property — it remains returnable. Under communauté, the relevant assets genuinely merge into a jointly-held community. Black's Law Dictionary's entries for both terms appear in proximity, and researchers working in historical French or Louisiana sources should be careful not to conflate the two.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears primarily in three research contexts: French civil law sources, Louisiana legal history, and comparative matrimonial property scholarship.
In Louisiana research, régime en communauté is foundational. Louisiana's community property system derives directly from French and Spanish civil law, and historical Louisiana statutes, court decisions, and legal instruments will use this term and its variants without translation. Researchers working in pre-twentieth century Louisiana materials should expect to encounter French-language legal terminology treated as operative legal vocabulary, not merely descriptive label.
In French civil law sources, the term has evolved. The French Civil Code originally established a default regime of communauté légale (legal community), which applied in the absence of a marriage contract specifying otherwise. Over time, French law modified the scope and default rules of communauté, shifting from a broader community of acquisitions and debts to a more limited regime. Historical French treatises and dictionaries will reflect the rules as they stood at the time of writing, which may differ from both modern French law and from the Louisiana adaptations of the same tradition.
Researchers should also note that the term appears in comparative law discussions of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where Anglo-American legal writers were attempting to explain civilian matrimonial regimes to common law audiences. These secondary sources can be useful for orientation but may oversimplify or slightly mischaracterize the internal distinctions within communauté-based systems.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's Law Dictionary provides a brief but accurate entry. The extract captured in the source material defines régime en communauté as "the community of property between husband and wife" under French law, situating it alongside régime dotal in a comparative discussion of French matrimonial property systems. Black's correctly identifies the contrast with the dotal regime, in which the dot is returnable upon dissolution, while the communauté regime operates as shared ownership.
Black's treatment is functional but thin. It does not distinguish between the variants of communauté (universal community, community of acquests and gains, reduced community), nor does it trace the evolution of the French Civil Code rules governing the regime. For a dictionary entry appearing in an Anglo-American reference work, this is unsurprising — the purpose was to give common law practitioners enough to recognize the term in a document, not to provide a treatise-level account.
What historical dictionaries largely miss is the Louisiana dimension. Despite Louisiana's direct legal inheritance of communauté-based matrimonial property rules, English-language legal dictionaries of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tend to treat the term as a foreign law curiosity rather than as operative vocabulary for a significant American jurisdiction. Researchers in Louisiana legal history should supplement dictionary sources with Louisiana-specific materials, including the Louisiana Civil Code and contemporaneous Louisiana treatises.
Jurisdictional Note
The term is operative in Louisiana legal history and in French civil law. In other American jurisdictions, community property exists as a concept but is not governed by or described through French communauté doctrine. Researchers encountering the term in non-Louisiana American sources are likely reading comparative or historical commentary rather than operative law.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia — Community Property; Marital Property Regimes; Louisiana Civil Law Tradition