ARIZONA BAR EXAM DISTINCTIONS — ONE-PAGE CHEAT SHEET
Condensed companion to the Arizona Bar Exam Distinctions long outline.
1. EXAM FORMAT
UBE jurisdiction (early adopter) · MBE 50% / MEE 30% / MPT 20% · minimum passing score 270 on the 400-point scale · transferred UBE scores accepted · essays test national/transferable doctrine, but community-property concepts can surface generically in family-law and trusts/estates essays.
2. COMMUNITY PROPERTY — THE CENTRAL DISTINCTION
Arizona is one of nine community-property states · all property acquired during marriage is presumptively community, owned 50/50 regardless of which spouse earned it or holds title · SEPARATE property = (a) owned before marriage, (b) acquired during marriage by gift, devise, or descent, (c) property acquired in exchange for separate property PLUS the rents, issues, and profits of separate property · character fixed at acquisition (inception-of-title rule) · commingled funds must be traced or the whole mass is presumed community; the separate-claim proponent rebuts the presumption by clear and convincing evidence · spouses may transmute character by valid agreement · quasi-community property = assets acquired while domiciled in a common-law state that would have been community if acquired in Arizona are treated as community at divorce/death · equal management, but joinder of BOTH spouses is required to sell, lease (>1 year), or encumber community real property and to bind the community as guarantor · at divorce, community is divided substantially equally (absent waste); at death, each spouse devises only his/her one-half — there is no elective share because the survivor already owns half.
3. CIVIL PROCEDURE
Personal-injury SOL 2 years · written contract 6 years · oral contract 3 years · suits against public entities require a 180-day notice of claim and suit within 1 year (strict bar) · Rule 26.1 imposes demanding mandatory disclosure · Rules otherwise track the FRCP.
4. EVIDENCE
Arizona Rules of Evidence are FRE-patterned with parallel numbering · Daubert standard for experts · apply the national MBE answer.
5. FAMILY LAW
Optional covenant marriage (limited fault-based grounds + mandatory counseling) · standard marriages dissolved no-fault (irretrievably broken) · no common-law marriage formed in AZ (but valid foreign common-law marriages recognized) · statutory spousal-maintenance factors and Arizona Child Support Guidelines · property division governed by the community-property rules above.
6. WILLS, TRUSTS & ESTATES
UPC state · holographic wills VALID (signature + material provisions in testator's hand) · 2 witnesses for attested wills · NO elective/forced share against community property (spouse already owns one-half; decedent devises only the other half) · UPC homestead/exempt-property/family allowances · intestate surviving spouse takes the decedent's community half (and full community where all descendants are shared); separate property passes under UPC shares.
7. REAL PROPERTY
Notice recording act — subsequent BFP without notice wins even without recording first · adverse possession baseline 10 years, shorter (as little as 3–5 years) with color of title + tax payment · deed of trust / nonjudicial trustee's-sale foreclosure is the norm · STRONG anti-deficiency statute (A.R.S. §33-814): NO deficiency judgment after trustee's