Money and Divorce

When divorces are tough there are usually issues with money. The rules on dividing assets, money, real estate, vehicles, anything of value, are simple, it is generally divided equally, regardless of who earned it, or, whose name is on it. The exception is something that was owned before the marriage, or, a gift to one spouse by family during the marriage, those are called non marital property, and, they go to whoever had them before the marriage, or, received the gift.

The process of division involves putting everything into two piles, one for each spouse. The goal is to even out the values, not including the non marital items. It seems easy, but, in cases where people have accumulated items of value of years of marriage, it can be very complex and time consuming. For vehicles, you can use the blue books, houses, can go with tax assessed values, or, appraisals, bank and investment accounts, can use statements, debt, can also use statements. It seems simple, but, if often is not, appraisers can have different opinions on house values, I have seen different appraisals with different opinions of value, blue book values are based on vehicle condition, there can be disagreements on that.

Even worse, dealing with unusual or non titled property. Construction equipment, classic cars, collections, can be very tough to value. Small items and household goods, ie hand tools, furniture, etc. are not only hard to value, but, because there is no record of ownership it can be a problem even proving who owns them.

Cases with a lot of property to fight over involve hours of hard work getting values, putting spreadsheets together, preparing appraisers and other witnesses to testify. After that is all done it is up to the judge. Just as putting a property case together is hard work, deciding after a trial is also tough. Many judges put in the hard work and do a great job, but, some struggle with sorting out the numbers. Even the judges that do a good job have a hard time sorting out conflicting opinions of value and contradictory testimony.

The bottom line, if you can find a way to settle a divorce with property issues by making an agreement with the other side you will only save thousands, likely well over $10,000 in legal fees, you will avoid alot of stress, and, a possibly unpredictable decision.