How do we split our stuff?
(10 Tips on Property Settlement)
- Divide your personal property without the help of your lawyer or the court. Unless domestic violence is involved, it’s not cost-effective to use lawyers or the court’s time to divide your furniture and personal belongings. By the time you’ve fought about it, you could’ve purchased all new things!
- Make an inventory of your household items, and decide what you’d like from the list, assign each item’s priority.
- Speak with your spouse (again, provided domestic violence is not involved) about what he or she would like from the inventory. Are there items which you can agree upon? If so, that part is settled.
- Try and divide things based on what you both actually need. Courts rarely award money in lieu of a share of personal property, so unless you and your spouse agree on a buy-out for a specific item (or even the whole houseful of furniture), you will receive personal property, not cash.
- If you can’t agree on how to divide your list of items, try flipping a coin, or drawing straws. One person picks first, the other second, and so-on.
- Try and divide the items sensibly. If your spouse has the children 75% of the time, maybe he should get the Xbox. If you need a computer for your business, that may take precedence over your child’s desire to use the internet.
- Gift items from family members ordinarily go back to the spouse to whom they were given. Grandma’s hope chest goes to her grandchild, not her ex-grandchild-in-law.
- Gift items between the two of you go to the original recipient. You don’t get back the diamond Valentines pendant from 2021 just because you’re splitting up now.
- If pets are involved, try and make your judgment based on where the pet is better off. Does your spouse have a shorter workday, while you work 14 hours straight? Fido probably needs walks more often than you can realistically provide.
- If it won’t matter in 5 years, let it go.