Nolo's Essential Guide to Divorce - Emily Doskow [113]
Symbolic value ...
One twice-divorced man compared his two split-ups: "After my first marriage, I just walked away and left her with everything. I thought it would be too painful to sit there dividing the record albums. We didn't have much then anyway. I never had any regrets about giving my ex all of it. The second divorce was much harder, because we'd accumulated a lot more stuff and I cared about it a lot more. For some reason I was determined that I wanted the really expensive, good standup mixer that was in our kitchen, even though I knew I could buy myself a new one. I did the cooking and it was my favorite toy. I was willing to trade just about anything for it and I laughed at myself later, but it meant something to me at the time." Try to develop a plan that gives your spouse things that are valuable not just in terms of money. For example, a dining room set that your spouse spent hours refinishing to a perfect shine might be much more valuable to your spouse than something else of the same or even greater monetary value. Your spouse may not accept your initial proposal in its entirety, but it should get you off on the right foot.
If you and your spouse are able to be in the same place without too much drama or anxiety, you can simply take turns picking items. You could also do it by email, first creating a list that you both think is pretty complete, and then sending messages back and forth choosing items. You should come out with a fairly even split this way unless one item is significantly more valuable than everything else. If that's the case, you might want to just leave that item out of the equation and figure it out separately.
However you decide to do it, keeping it simple and keeping the lawyers out of it should be your goal.
Assets With Fluctuating Values
The value of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and other market-related items is always changing. On any given day, you can know their value, but over time that value can definitely change quite a hit. (It's also true of real estate, but the fluctuations tend to be more gradual.)
Given that your divorce won't be completed for months after your separation, how should you deal with assets that rapidly fluctuate in value? You have a few choices:
• Assign each asset a value as of the date of separation and stick with it, even if the actual value is different when you distribute it. Often, you won't be dividing the actual asset, but trading it for something else of equal value. If you do, then each of you takes a risk. The one who kept the volatile asset takes the risk that it will decrease in value; the one who took something else risks having given up an asset that increases in value. Be willing to live with whatever decision you make, or use another method of division.
• Divide the actual asset or account. For a stock trading account, this would mean that each spouse takes a portion of the shares of each stock and moves it into a separately held account. If you were to do this, you would simply take whatever number corresponds to your percentage of the marital property-for example, if you live in an equitable distribution state and you agree to keep or are assigned 60% of the marital assets, you would take 600 out of 1,000 shares of stock.
Before you do the dividing, of course, you need to consider what you want to keep. If you or your spouse invested together in real estate, mutual funds, or art, you may have emotional attachments to some of them just as you do to your house or your personal property. Try to be detached and look at what it really makes sense to keep. Do you want to know you can get your money out of an investment when you need it, or are you willing to wait while long-term bonds mature? Get some advice from a financial planner who can help you consider