If you’re getting divorced, some of your assets may be separate assets, which means you don’t have to split them with your spouse. You often get to keep assets from before the marriage, for instance, or even some gifts that were given directly to you during that marriage.
For marital assets, though, some level of division is necessary. This may be relatively easy with something like a financial account. Perhaps you and your spouse use the same savings account. You could withdraw the money, split it in half, open personal accounts, and deposit your shares.
But what about assets that you can’t share in this fashion? What about the family home or a car that you bought together? You clearly can’t divide these tangible assets, so what do you do?
Selling is often the only answer
In many cases, you have to sell the asset so that you can split up the money. Maybe you bought your house for $200,000 and it’s paid off. But the housing market has gone up, so you sell it for $300,000 and you each take $150,000. This could also be done with vacation properties, real estate, family businesses, automobiles and much more.
In other cases, the court can simply try to divide the total assets evenly, even if they’re not exactly the same. For example, maybe that house is worth $300,000 and so is your vacation property. The court may simply give one piece of real estate to you and the other to your spouse.
Finally, people will sometimes buy out their spouse’s share of a specific asset. You could refinance and buy your spouse’s half of the house, for instance.
No matter what you decide to do, it can get very complicated, so be sure you know about your legal options.
