One of the most difficult parts of separating from your partner will be the legal process of dividing your assets. The longer you have been together, the more intertwined your lives will be.
And it’s not just about the big assets like cars and homes. It’s the smaller items that make up the bulk of your home that often cause a lot of stress. How will you split your books? Who gets to take the air fryer? Who keeps the photo albums?
There is simply no way to streamline this process and make it less stressful. Instead, it’s better to accept that it will be difficult and then agree to try to keep things amicable.
Staying amicable when splitting up is often easier said than done, but if you have some ground rules in place, it can make the situation less traumatic.
Real talk on splitting assets
It helps to follow a simple system when splitting assets. Start by determining what you both came into the relationship with. Those items remain your property and they should leave with their respective owners.
For example, if one of you owned a car before you got married, you should get to keep this without having to split the value. The same goes for purchases that were specifically for yourself during the marriage.
The exception would be if you signed any sort of agreement that said that all of your assets would be shared.
Next, you need to look at the assets that were purchased together or that were given to you as a gift. Make a list and assign each item a value. You can then decide who would prefer to take each item. This is where amicable negotiations come into play. Avoid trying to stake a claim to items just to irritate your ex partner, as you can guarantee they will find a way to do the same back to you.
A note on larger purchases
Some items can’t be easily split or divided. For example, a home might be your largest asset. If you have children, it’s beneficial for the children to remain in their home with one parent. But what about the other parent?
There are ways you could manage this. The parent staying in the home could use other assets to “buy” out the other partner. So one partner will get the home, and the other will get everything else. Or you could release equity from the home to give the other partner a lump sum equivalent to their half of the equity.
Splitting your finances
It’s important to ensure financial ties are fully severed before moving forward, as you could still have an impact on each other’s credit scores if you fail to do this effectively. This will mean closing any joint bank accounts, refinancing items that are in both of your names, and applying to remortgage the property with just one person on the deed.
What happens when you can’t agree?
You can’t move forward with your divorce until you reach an agreement, so you might need to get the courts involved to help you make decisions about how the assets should be divided.
Remember that the courts will take a black and white approach, looking solely at the monetary value and not the sentimental value of items. So, if you want to make sure the assets are divided in the fairest way possible, it helps to reach an agreement between yourselves in an amicable way. If you cannot reach an agreement, the decision will need to be taken out of your hands, and this could result in an even worse outcome.
