Divorce is never easy, but splitting your assets after a divorce has occurred can be the most difficult thing to deal with. It’s a four step process to settle a property and to make sure that you can split your assets amicably. Even if your divorce wasn’t an amicable one, you might find that splitting your assets is easier than you think.
From understanding what a Quit Claim Deed is to understanding what you need to do to get the most from your property, it’s so important that you do this properly. Getting the help of a good legal mind is vital if you want to make sure that this asset split goes down as easily as possible. Let’s take a look at what you need to know about splitting assets after a divorce.
- Identify your assets and liabilities. If you’re going to split your assets that you accumulated while you were together and in love, you need to know what the assets are in the first place. If one or both of your parents loaned you money to buy the house, then you need to determine who has the most ownership in the house and split it that way. If one of you came into the marriage with a property already, then the split may be a little different. This is why you need good legal advice from day one.
- How much are your assets worth? It’s often not realised that assets are not valued at the separation date, but they’re valued at the date of the day that you sit down to look at the assets value. The contributions might stop a separation, but assets keep rising in value. So if you split six months ago, you have to consider that the value of your property will be worth what it is 6 months after your split and not on the day that your split took place. The only exception here is bank cash, which is if you have it and take it and spend it, it’s usually valued as the amount that you’ve taken.
- Assess what your contributions are. Husbands and wives often contribute in unique ways. Homemakers who don’t have their own income will still get the same credit as the income earner because they went so long without anything. Long marriages tend towards 50/50 contributions and short marriages that don’t include any children tend towards keeping what you brought in. There are lots of different negatives that surround asset splits though, so sitting together with a mediator can really help to avoid any of the emotional injections.
- Consider your future needs. Technically it’s not all about the future, but mostly it is. The two most common adjustments are for different income earning capacity and the majority care of dependent children. There could be a shift from 50/50 to say 65/35, and usually this is a factor that sees a simple observation as to what the contribution to the marriage was.
No matter what you do when it comes to splitting assets, you must get everything in writing.
