Community

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.