Community
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COMMUNITY. This word has several meanings; when used in common parlance it
signifies the body of the people.
2. In the civil law, by community is understood corporations, or bodies
politic. Dig. 3, 4.
3. In the French law, which has been adopted in this respect in
Louisiana, Civ. Code, art. 2371, community is a species of partnership,
which a man and woman contract when they are lawfully married to each other.
It consists of the profits of all, the effects of which the husband has the
administration and enjoyment, either of right or in fact; of the produce of
the reciprocal industry and labor of both husband and wife, and of the
estates which they may acquire during the marriage, either by donations made
jointly to them, or by purchase, or in any other similar way, even although
the purchase he made in the name of one of the two, and not of both; because
in that case the period of time when the purchase is made is alone attended
to, and not the person who made the purchase. 10 L. R. 146; Id. 172, 181; 1
N. S. 325; 4 N. S. 212. The debts contracted during the marriage enter into
the community, and must be acquitted out of the common fund; but not the
debts contracted before the marriage.
4. The community is either, first, conventional, or that which is
formed by an express agreement in the contract of marriage itself; by this
contract the legal community may be modified, as to the proportions which
each shall take, or as to the things which shall compose it; Civ. Code of L.
art. 2393; second, legal, which takes place when the parties make no
agreement on this subject in the contract of marriage; when it is regulated
by the law of the domicil they had at the time of marriage.
5. The effects which compose the community of gains, are divided into
two equal portions between the heirs, at the dissolution of the marriage.
Civ. Code of L. art. 2375. See Poth. h.t.; Toull. h.t.; Civ. Code of Lo.
tit. 6, c. 2, s. 4.
6. In another sense, community is the right which all men have,
according to the laws of nature, to use all things. Wolff, Inst. Sec. 186.