Probably, but the fix up effort is probably going to cost you something, and unless you spend only money that's clearly separate, and only a LITTLE time, rather than considering this your occupation... well... the thing is, if you take time away from work to increase the value of your separate property, the court will probably find it equitable to give her part of the value of that work... unless of course you give the same falue to HER house.
You'll really have to keep good records on this one, though. Receipts & a spreadsheet for each house, to show that equal amounts of "joint" or "community" effort went into each separate place. And I'm not even going to address the fact that you'll probably have mortgages to pay on both places... not many people pay for their houses or investment properties outright... and ... well, if she buys a million dollar home with a five hundred thousand down payment, and you buy a hundred thousand dollare home with a fifty thousand dollar down payment... her mortgage might be like five thousane a month while yours is five hundred... That 5K per month that is paid for hers ends up being equitably called part yours, and the 500 that is spent on yours is equitably hers... and over time she's going to lose a TON of the value of hers... she stands to lose nearly half a million to you while you only stand to lose 50 K to her. It's not really fair if you are each thinking taht it's your own separate property, but if you are paying this much to support her property, of course you will understand why this happens.
My concern is that it looks like you and she are trying to keep stuff out of each other's hands, where you should be trying to figure out how to protect each other, join forces... you & she against the world. If you & she have nearly equal amounts of savings to put into your new house & investment, why don't you suggest taht rather than trying to keep it all seaprate and have to deal with calculating the amount of joint effort spent on each propert, you just pool your efforts and have one big fund to live on & invest with rather than spending so much time trying to keep it all separate.
If the value of your separate contributions to your separate property is about equal,
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