The more success people enjoy during marriage, the more difficult it may be to divorce. Personal resources are often complicating factors during divorce proceedings. Spouses have to determine what assets they share, what those assets are worth and how to divide them in a fair manner.
People who have enjoyed a comfortable standard of living through marriage are often anxious about the impact that divorce might have on their financial circumstances. Spouses typically want to preserve as much of the marital estate as they can to ensure their financial stability after the divorce.
The three strategies below may be beneficial for those anticipating a complex, high-asset divorce.
1. Establishing property as separate
The marital estate is subject to division when couples divorce. Regardless of who earned more during the marriage, both spouses share an interest in the income generated during the marital relationship.
They also share ownership of any assets acquired with that income. Spouses typically also need to share responsibility for debts that they took on during the marriage.
Separate property has protection from the asset division process. Gifts and inherited items are typically separate property. People may also be able to protect resources by proving that they owned them prior to marriage.
2. Conducting a thorough financial review
The more resources spouses accumulate during marriage, the easier it is to overlook assets as they prepare for divorce. One spouse could potentially move valuable artworks and antiques to a storage unit and exclude those assets from their disclosure paperwork.
Other times, one spouse might intentionally undervalue certain assets or may even give away property. Spouses may need to use a variety of resources to identify and value marital assets. Physically locating property, obtaining household financial records and appropriately valuing assets can give people more leverage as they try to negotiate property division terms.
3. Working toward a settlement
In litigated divorces, spouses pay quite a bit to have a judge settle their property division disagreements. They also have no control over the outcome and may have to liquidate assets that they prefer to retain.
In scenarios where spouses can negotiate a settlement directly through their lawyers or by pursuing alternative dispute resolution, they can preserve more of the marital estate by keeping costs low and achieve specific property division goals that a judge might not fulfill in a litigated divorce.
Approaching property division matters strategically can help increase the likelihood of spouses feeling satisfied with the outcome. People concerned about high-asset divorce proceedings may need to discuss their priorities at length to develop workable strategies.