In In re Marriage of Branco (1996) 47 Cal.App.4th 1621, a woman owned a house that was subject to a mortgage when she married in 1977. In 1978, she and her husband refinanced the mortgage on the house, and used a portion of the loan proceeds to pay off the original mortgage. The court concluded that there was "no meaningful difference, for purposes of determining whether the community acquires an interest in real property, between the use of community funds to make payments on one spouse's preexisting loan and the use of proceeds from a community property loan to pay off the preexisting separate loan." (Branco, supra, 47 Cal.App.4th at p. 1627.) It thus stated: "Applied to the present case, the community property interest in the home would be computed by dividing the community's contribution to the purchase price of the home (payments reducing principal made with community funds on the original loan, if any, plus the principal balance of the loan paid off with proceeds from the postnuptial mortgage) by the purchase price. This percentage would then be multiplied by the appreciation of the home during the years of the marriage." (Id. at p. 1629.) It added that the separate property share included "one-half of the community interest in the appreciation during marriage, as well as all the appreciation before the marriage and after separation, the down payment and payments reducing principal on the original loan made before the marriage." (Ibid.) The Court addressed the application of the Moore/Marsden rule when community funds from a mortgage secured by separate property are used to pay off a prenuptial loan by which the owner of the separate property bought it. In Branco, a woman owned a house that was subject to a mortgage when she married in 1977. (Id. at p. 1623.) In 1978, she and her husband refinanced the mortgage on the house, and used a portion of the loan proceeds to pay off the original mortgage. (Ibid.) The court in Branco concluded that there was "no meaningful difference, for purposes of determining whether the community acquires an interest in real property, between the use of community funds to make payments on one spouse's preexisting loan and the use of proceeds from a community property loan to pay off the preexisting separate loan." (Branco, supra, 47 Cal.App.4th at p. 1627.) It thus stated: "Applied to the present case, the community property interest in the home would be computed by dividing the community's contribution to the purchase price of the home (payments reducing principal made with community funds on the original loan, if any, plus the principal balance of the loan paid off with proceeds from the post-nuptial mortgage ) by the purchase price. This percentage would then be multiplied by the appreciation of the home during the years of the marriage." (Id. at p. 1629.) The Branco court added that the separate property case share included "one-half of the community interest in the appreciation during marriage, as well as all the appreciation before the marriage and after separation, the down payment and payments reducing principal on the original loan made before the marriage." (Branco, supra, 47 Cal.App.4th at p. 1629.) The court in Branco also concluded that in the circumstances before it, responsibility for paying off the community property mortgage was properly assigned to the community, rather than to the separate property owner, given that the spouses had used some of the funds to pay separate property obligations. (47 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1625, 1629.)