The courts are reluctant to get involved in dividing up personal property, so if you and your spouse can do it yourselves, that is the best way to proceed. By the time you’ve argued in court about a two year old TV set and a sofa with a spot on it, you will have spent enough in lawyers’ fees to purchase both items new. Sit down with the list of your personal property and sort out the obvious items that one spouse or the other will want. The antique that came from your mother’s family home should go back to you, and his favorite recliner should go to him. Narrow your list to those items which are actually in dispute.
Once you have determined which items are in dispute, make a list of them. From here, there are several ways to proceed. One frequently used method is to flip a coin, and the winner gets to pick the first item, the loser gets to pick the second item, the winner gets to pick the third item, and so forth.
Another possibility is to assign a dollar value to the property and have an “auction”. The spouse who wants certain pieces of property the most will be willing to pay the other spouse more for them than the spouse to whom the property is less important.
The Court will be reluctant to award one spouse money in exchange for giving the other spouse most of the personal property. Despite your sentimental attachment to your furniture and personal items, unless they are antiques, oriental rugs, or paintings by famous artists, most of your items have more value to you personally than they would to someone else. A judge will be unlikely to place values on the items, and award one spouse or the other the commensurate cash value for the items.
The message is to negotiate with your spouse for any personal property that you want, and don’t expect to be paid for what you give up. Take what you feel you deserve, but don’t expect any cash in lieu of property given up unless you both agree. For a good article on dividing property without a fight, see http://www.divorcehelp.com/rr/rr09.html.
If you cannot agree upon a fair way to divide up the items in dispute, at least you have narrowed the list, hopefully to a manageable length, for your lawyer to deal with in negotiations, or for the judge to divide at the time of the trial. For more tips on divvying up everything from family silver to DVDs, see http://www.firstwivesworld.com/resources/resource-articles/divvying-everything-family-silver-dvds-during-divorce.
Emotions run high for certain possessions, and spouses sometimes use these hot buttons as an opportunity to retaliate against the other person. A good benchmark is “will this matter in 5 years?” If it will not matter, then be prepared to give it up now.
Excerpted from Your Divorce Advisor: A Lawyer and a Psychologist Guide You Through the Legal and Emotional Landscape of Divorce (Simon & Schuster/Fireside 2001). For more information: http://www.yourdivorceadvisor.com/.
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