Informationyou Need to Know About Asset Division in Divorce

Todd Orston:

Welcome everyone to Divorce Team Radio, a show sponsored by the divorce and family law firm of Meriwether and Tharp. I'm your host, Todd Orston, and here, you're going to learn about divorce, family law, and from time to time even tips on how to save your marriage if it's in the middle of a crisis. If you want to read more about us, you can always check us out online at atlantadivorceteam.com. All right, let's get started. So today, recently we've done some deep dives into alimony, into child support and other things. Today, I want to do a deep dive into equitable division of property. What is that? So we're talking about asset division and in a divorce, typically, we break it down into what we call the four core areas of a divorce.

And that's going to be child custody, if that applies, child support, if it applies, alimony, also called spousal support and division of properties. So today, we're going to talk about division of property and how that's handled here in Georgia. And in Georgia ... so there's a standard as with many, if not all aspects of the law, there's a standard that is applied. Basically, that is how the courts will look at and deal with the issue of asset division in the context of a divorce. Here in Georgia, some of you may have heard the term equitable division of property. Other states they have different standards or different ways of approaching asset division.

You may have heard of community property states. Well here, again, equitable division of property. So what does that mean? Well, the way I define it is ... and when, I talk to people, I will explain that it's what is fair and reasonable under these specific circumstances of your situation. Well, okay, what does that mean? It means the judge has a lot of discretion. There are no hard and fast rules. We were married for five years and therefore this is how the estate is divided. We were married for 35 years and therefore this is how it is divided, or I have this income, they have that income. This is the rule and what must happen equitable division is what is fair, what is reasonable and fairness and reasonability, well, that's very subjective.

So when you are presenting to a judge ... or most cases, don't go before a judge. If you are negotiating, if you're working with a mediator to try and bridge certain settlement gaps, then you need to be thinking in terms of, okay, here's the situation, what's fair, what's going to be reasonable? Sometimes parties can very quickly get to that point and sometimes not. Sometimes they need help and sometimes, not as often, but sometimes, unfortunately, it takes a judge to issue a ruling. Today, I want to go through equitable division because I want to give you some tools so that if you have to deal with this issue. If you have to negotiate asset division in the context of a divorce, that you're taking reasonable positions. You understand the standard.

You understand what the court would be looking at so that when you sit down and you start negotiating, hopefully, you'll take positions that lead you towards settlement, not away from it. That's really the goal. Obviously, the ultimate goal is maybe you can save the marriage, maybe you can avoid divorce altogether, but if that's not possible and we all recognize divorce, it's a reality, then you want it to be as amicable as possible. We've talked about this many times where we are a resolution focused firm. Our approach is one of let's try to be reasonable, let's understand the issues and the property that's out there and let's figure out a fair way to divide it.

Now, I will say this, while equitable does not mean equal, very often that's how a judge is going to land. And again, do not take that as gospel as that is an absolute. All right. I'm simply saying that very often the court will lean towards a 50/50 split of assets. So now, we need to then talk about, and we're going to in the show. Like I said, this is a deep dive. Once you identify all the assets, because that's step number one, then you have to talk about things like, is it marital property subject to division or is it separate property that has some level of protection and shouldn't apply in terms of the asset division?

Then, we have to look at the different types of assets because it's not always apples to apples. One asset of a certain value might not be equal to the other asset that has an equal value on paper, simply because of other things like tax considerations and things like that. So we're going to talk and do this deep dive and we're going to talk about equitable division of property, asset division in a divorce. Think of it like ... I'm going to start very quickly, in terms of identifying the assets, think of it like a pie and that pie is going to be divided in some way. Maybe you get half of the pie.

And what I've already said is maybe the judge is going to lean towards, "Hey, I want to divide this pie equally." So step number one is what? Well, let's see how big this pie is. Identify all the assets, get current values for all the assets. And when I say all the assets, I don't mean some of the assets. I'm being very literal, all of the assets. Step number one is you have to identify what's out there. So you need to be thinking of the different types of assets and getting documentation to establish values, bank accounts, cash, investment accounts, retirement accounts, real property, personal property.

Because I can tell you right now, if you don't do those things necessary to identify the assets and value the assets, it will absolutely interfere with your ability to settle. If your goal is to get through, then you have to have the data necessary to engage in those discussions with the other party. You can't go into, there are a lot of people who will say, well, we just want to go straight to mediation. Okay. And there are people who are like, "Well, we want to do it and I don't know if we need attorneys." Okay, but have you done the things necessary to prepare for mediation because you're going to walk in and a mediator is going to look and go, "All right, well let's deal with equitable division." What are the assets?

Well, we have retirement. Well, what retirement accounts? I think we each have one. Okay, what's the value of them? Not sure. Well, at that point it's a wasted effort. So if you're going to go into mediation, go into court of course, or even if you're just sitting across the table, that you're really trying to keep things amicable and you're like, all right, well let's talk about this. Let's talk about the four core, let's now talk about division of property. Then you have to think in terms of ... I mean you have to have that accurate data. So you can sit and you can say, all right, here's the pie and this is what the pie is comprised of. And we have some cash, we have bank accounts, we have personal property of course, and maybe we own a home and there are retirement accounts, there's whatever it might be.

And here are the accurate numbers, the values as of today, and we're going to talk about and go into more detail as to why it's incredibly important. You can't simply say, "Hey, we each have a retirement account. How about we just each keep our own?" Well, yeah, that sounds incredibly reasonable until you look and you see one party has a million dollars and the other party has $10,000 and it's like, "Well hold on one second. I'm not great at math, but I don't know if that's reasonable." So you have to understand the values. You need to engage. At the very least. I know it's hard going through a divorce. You don't want to do this. You need the data.

You need to put forth that effort to make sure you have all the information you need to make good decisions, because once you ... and this is very important, I'd like to believe everything I'm saying is very important, but this is really important. There's no going back. There is no modification in Georgia. There is no modification of division of property. Once it's done, it's done. You can't come back and go, "Yeah, that wasn't really fair. I think I want more. Hey, I gave up assets and I didn't do the homework and maybe I ended up getting 20% of the estate." That's unreasonable.

If you signed off on that, you're stuck and there is no modifying that. So we're going to keep going. When we get back, I'm going to start talking about specific types of property. We're going to start with bank accounts and cash and we'll move into investment and retirement accounts and we're going to talk about different things you should be thinking about when it comes to division of property because again, you've got one shot at this, you don't want to make a mistake, we'll be right back.

Speaker 2:

I just wanted to let you know that if you ever wanted to listen to the show live, you can listen at 1:00 AM on Monday mornings on WSB, so you can always check us out there as well.

Todd Orston:

Better than like counting sheep, I guess, right?

Speaker 2:

That's right.

Todd Orston:

You can turn on the show and we'll help you fall asleep.

Speaker 2:

There you go.

Todd Orston:

I'll talk very softly. Welcome back everyone to Divorce Team Radio, a show sponsored by the divorce and family law firm of Meriwether and Tharp. I'm your host Todd, and if you want to read more about us, you can check us out online at atlantadivorceteam.com. If you want to read a transcript of the show or go back and listen to this show or other shows, you can go to divorceteamradio.com. I also want to let you know if you want to listen to the show live, you can listen at 1:00 AM on Monday mornings on WSB, so you can always check us out there as well and go onto our website.

All right, the data is out there, the information is out there and today, the information we're going over is equitable division of property. What is that? Well, it's a component of a divorce. It is a part of the divorce process because when you think about the issues that need to be resolved in a divorce, we're dealing with custody and child support and spousal support. Well, then of course, it's who gets what in terms of property. I want the toaster, I want the lake house, I want the car, I want whatever it might be, but it's not just you filling out your wishlist and you get everything you want. There are two parties asking for some portion of the estate and I know it's going to surprise a lot of listeners.

I guarantee you, each party wants as much as they can get. So if you want everything and the other party wants everything, guess what's not going to happen? One party is not going to get everything. There's going to be some middle ground. Oftentimes courts will lean towards a 50/50. It's not a guarantee. Equitable division remember, doesn't mean necessarily equal. Oftentimes, that's how a court leans, but it doesn't necessarily require an equal division. It's what's fair under the circumstances. So I went into all of that in the first segment. Now, let's start talking about specific types of property. So let's start with something pretty basic, bank accounts or cash. Well, it is pretty basic because cash in hand, you don't have to worry about a lot of other issues like tax consequences of transferring the asset, accessing the accounting question.

We deal with that with the retirement or on the retirement side, but when we're dealing with cash or cash equivalents, if I have $10 in my pocket and I have to suddenly divide that money, I can go and I can break that 10 and give five to the other party and you're done. So the complicating factors when you're dealing with bank accounts and division of cash, number one, if you are someone, and we have had many clients unfortunately who did these types of things where you keep a lot of cash on hand in the house, not in a bank, then understand tracking and tracing the asset can be very difficult.

And if you don't have any record of the asset existing and the asset disappears, it's very difficult to prove it ever existed. "Hey judge, we had $25,000 in cash sitting in a safe in the house," and the judge looks and says, "Wow, all right, 25,000, you're right, we need to get to the bottom of this. Hey other party, can you explain to this court what happened to that 25,000. Judge I can, we never had it. I don't know what they are talking about. We keep our money in a bank, I have a few documents in the safe, here's a picture. I don't know what they're talking about in terms of that $25,000 in cash. And if you don't have evidence to prove that it existed, then you can't prove it exists or existed.

Then it's going to be up to the judge and its credibility issue and if you truly can't prove it was ever in there, then it becomes really difficult to try and ask the court to award you something of equal value to, in essence, reimburse you. So that's something you need to think about, but bank accounts ... the other thing you also have to think about is what's going to happen to the actual account? What's important ... well, it's all important, but what's important is not only who gets what portion of the $10 that's in the account, but there are some people who will say, I want that account. I've had a relationship with that bank for 20 years now and there are certain benefits that go along with the account.

And I would like to maintain the account in question. So that becomes an issue as to, is it going to be closed down, meaning the account shut down or will a party be awarded the account and a portion of the value in the account will be transferred? And the only cautionary statement I make there is if a party once had access to it. Obviously, they know and should know, following a divorce, if one party was awarded the account that post-divorce, they should not be accessing that account whether they have the ability or not, that's a different story. Let's say they can. Let's say you haven't taken steps to lock them out, they shouldn't be going into the account, but guess what? It doesn't always work out that way.

We've dealt with those issues in the context of a contempt, where someone just goes into the account and takes something else out and they're like, "Oh, I thought I was allowed. I thought I could. I had a marital expense. I had to pay." So that's another issue. All right, let's talk about investment accounts. Now, typically, an investment account, unlike a lot of retirement accounts, but an investment account in terms of taxes, usually, it's post-tax dollars. It's very similar to cash. You're taking the cash and you're putting it into an investment account and then investing it. So let's say you have an investment account with $50,000 of value.

The complicating factor there is, it's not just about, "Well I want 25,000. Okay, great." I understand maybe the parties are like, "Yeah, okay, each of us gets 25,000," but every stock, every portion of that or different portion of that investment account may not be the same. So in other words, who gets what portion of the ... let's say it's a stock account, of the stocks. Some stocks are doing better than others. There might be bonds. There might be other things. So in other words, you may get 25,000 and it's all a bunch of dogs that are losing value and the other party gets 25,000, that quickly grows to more than 25,000.

So it can sometimes get to a point where you're like, "Well, we need to be smarter about this. We need to make sure that how we divide that money, how we divide that value reflects what is in each party's best interest," meaning that both parties are walking away with something of equal value. Not one party taking the rocket ship that is increasing in value and the other one gets the ... like I said, gets that dog that the company just doesn't know when to die. So that's something when you're dealing with investment accounts, but those investment accounts, unlike retirement accounts, many, not all but most retirement accounts, a lot.

You don't have to deal with the tax issue, meaning it's not like the money in that account is a pre-tax dollar that has yet to be taxed and therefore if you move money out, there's a tax consequence and potentially a penalty. Switching focus now to retirement accounts, 401Ks for instance, and it becomes even much more complex if you're in the military, dealing with military benefits and some just other public institutions that you might work for where you have a different type of 401K type account. Now, you're dealing with pre-tax dollars. That's where things get a little bit more complex.

You still have to look at the nature of the account, how the account is valued, all of those types of things. Where it gets more complex is when someone says, "Well, okay, let's say $50,000 investment account, $50,000 retirement account, pre-tax versus post-tax dollar. Okay, how about you just take the investment account or I'll take that, you take the retirement. Yay, high five. That's fair. Well, not really. The 50,000 from the investment account you can take out immediately. You have access to the cash, the retirement account. If you take it out right now, there's going to be a tax consequence. So 50,000 is now less.

There's going to potentially be, if not, probably, a penalty. That 50,000 is even less. So now, we're not talking about apples to apples, we're talking about. You're getting ... the party who got the investment account, has the watermelon and you've got something far less. So you have to be thinking about those things. The tax considerations are very important and that's where what's called a qualified domestic relations order, QDRO. You probably heard about this if you've done some research, that's where that comes into play. It allows for the division of a pre-tax qualified account without any penalties or taxes. It's almost like it just divides two of the same type of account.

All right, so when we come back, we're going to keep talking about different types of assets. I'm going to jump into real property or houses and personal property, which you would think should be easy, but sometimes it becomes the biggest issue in the case. We'll be right back.

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Todd Orston:

All right, welcome back everyone. I'm Todd, your host and this is Divorce Team Radio, our show sponsored by the divorce and family law firm of Meriwether and Tharp. If you want to read more about us, you can always check us out online at atlantadivorceteam.com. And if you want to read a transcript of this show or go back and listen to it again or other shows again, you can find it at divorceteamradio.com. So today, we are talking about division of property, all right? Not custody, not alimony, not child support, division of property. Who gets this stuff? Who gets what?

And we've been talking about just generally equitable division of property, which is the standard here in Georgia. We've been talking about different types of assets, bank accounts, cash, investment accounts, retirement accounts. So now, I want to talk about two other areas where there are assets that need to be considered and divided. And sometimes these are some of the most emotional issues that need to be resolved when it comes to division of property. Real property, which it doesn't mean that it's real, that it exists. Real property, that term, of course, means houses, land. That kind of stuff. So real property, it's the marital residence for instance. And obviously, when it comes to a home, I mean I've seen it go every which way.

I've seen where parties are like, don't care, it's a roof and some walls and I don't care who gets it, but let's just deal with the value. I've seen the opposite, where people are saying, I poured my blood, sweat and tears into this home, into building this home and then, it becomes an issue as to who in the divorce will get that asset. One party says I want it, the other party says, I have ... you maybe made the house. I've seen it, I literally once saw where one party was a builder and built the house. I was like, I built this home, but his spouse was like, "No, he built a house, I made this our home and we raised children here and dogs and whatever the case might have been." And it becomes an emotional issue.

And I already said, we're going to be talking about personal property. The funny thing is ... not funny, but you know what I mean. I've seen people take that position with things like a toaster. I love that toaster, got that toaster for our wedding. I want the toaster. No, I want the toaster. Okay, I'll buy you both a brand new better toaster, I've seen that too. With real property there are a lot of things you need to think about. So it's not as simple as saying, "Okay to keep the house because oftentimes, that's the biggest asset that you have." I mean, especially nowadays, where real property values have kind of skyrocketed and who knows what's going to happen in the future.

That's a topic for a different show, but house value has gone up. So there are a lot of people that have more value than they've ever realized, expected, whatever in the house that they own. So even if they have a mortgage, as most people do, where there are people who ... they were like, "Well, we have no equity." Then, six months later, eight months later, it's like, "Wow, we have like 50,000, $100,000 thousand in value." I was talking to somebody the other day where they're moving, they sold their house and the first person that said, "Hey, the house has to be sold. This is the value." They said, "Well wait a minute. We were thinking about actually asking for 250 more than that, 250,000 more than that."

Another realtor not only got that 250 but got 250 above that. So the market can be crazy, but the point is that when you're dealing with a house, it doesn't just stop at what is the value of the home at the time it needs to be divided. You have to deal with the emotional side and then putting the emotional side aside or the emotional issue aside, rather, you have to deal with all the specifics that go along with the house. There's three options. One party gets the house and has to pay whatever share of the equity to the other or they get a portion of some other assets to level the playing field.

The other party gets it and does the same thing for that first one, the first party or the asset is sold and then, after all the expenses are paid, whatever is left over gets divided in some way. All right. It doesn't even stop there. If you're going to keep the house. And this is where people will call and they'll be like, "Yeah, I think we have an agreement so I'm just going to keep the house," and I'll pay something or they'll pay me something. And I have to look at them and say, "Okay, that's great that you guys have reached an agreement." So answer me this, when is it going on the market? Who is going to list it? Who's going to be responsible for the upkeep of the house while it's being listed?

What if somebody makes an offer? Who is going to have the authority to accept or reject that offer? What are the terms of the sale? Basically, what happens when it is sold? What happens more importantly if it's not sold? What happens if we just can't get somebody to bite? Can we force the issue? Did I move out of the house? Am I giving the other party the ability to stay there? Are they keeping it? Are they going to refinance? What happens if they don't refinance? What happens if whatever time we gave them three months, six months, they come back and they're like, "I've applied to every bank there is and no one will qualify me for a refinance," to remove your name from the indebtedness.

Well, what happens then? I've seen too many parties get into a lot of trouble and not deal with the specifics and then, a year later the other party is still going, "Yeah, sorry, can't refinance." And there's no requirement that the house be sold. It comes down to, you have to be very specific. At the very least, have a consultation with an attorney to talk about those specifics, because if you don't, remember, there's no going back and modifying what you did. And I've seen parties two years, three years in, where they can't get any resolution from a court because of unfortunate settlement terms and the other party is sitting there going, "Sorry, can't refinance but hey, I get to stay here for as long as I want. I get to live here."

So what if they are staying and they're assuming the mortgage, what if they fail to make payments and now, it's affecting your credit? So these are all issues that you need to be thinking about. And of course, you have the primary residence, secondary residences, things like that, land. So it does get ... it's not that it's complex. It's that there are a lot of nuances, there's a lot of minutia. There are a lot of details you can't ignore. You know what else you can't ignore? That toaster, that darned toaster. Personal property and judges, I can tell you right now, they will do what they need to do of course, but hearing parties fighting over who gets which blanket and toaster and whatever, and TV.

I can tell you the court doesn't want to hear that, but of course, you need to be treated fairly, I get it. I get that as well. So there are different ways, and this is where emotions can really muck up the works. So you need to obviously identify all of the assets in question and this is something that you can try and do in the context of the divorce, you should of course, so that hopefully you can avoid this issue. Remember, in any divorce, it doesn't mean ... if you can't agree on one issue, it doesn't mean you're fighting about every issue. You can have partial settlements resolve, let's say, personal property, but hey, we're still dealing with some custodial issues.

So there are different ways to deal with personal property. A way is make a master list. Every fork, spoon, TV, couch, car, everything. Cars are usually sort of separate. It's, you keep that car, I'll keep that car because it's a bigger value item usually. Basically, come up with a master list and if you can, just sit down with the other party and say, "Hey, this is what I'm thinking." If you don't think that's going to work, there are other ways to handle it. One party makes two lists. You make the master list, everybody says, "Yep, that's the master list." One party will then separate the property into two piles and the other party gets to choose which pile.

That's going to keep the first person honest, because if they put too many good things in pile one, the other party is going to pick pile one. You can also use a mediator or someone to step in and in essence, mediate the division of the assets. You can do a, "I pick then you pick" kind of situation. There are different ways to handle it, but don't get caught up in the who gets the toaster. I can tell you you'll spend a lot more money than the value of that toaster fighting over who gets what. All right. When we come back, I want to talk about basically things you should be doing in order to prepare for this discussion. Okay? Some practical things you should be thinking about. We'll be right back.

Speaker 2:

I just wanted to let you know that if you ever wanted to listen to the show live, you can listen at 1:00 AM on Monday mornings on WSB, so you can always check us out there as well.

Todd Orston:

Better than counting sheep I guess, right?

Speaker 2:

That's right.

Todd Orston:

You can turn on the show and we'll help you fall asleep.

Speaker 2:

There you go.

Todd Orston:

I'll talk very softly. All right, welcome back. I'm Todd and this is of course, Divorce Team Radio. A show sponsored by Meriwether and Tharp. If you want to read more about us, you can check us out online at atlantadivorceteam.com. If you want to read a transcript of the show, listen to it again, listen to other shows, you can go to divorceteamradio.com. So today we're talking about equitable division of property and that's one of the four core areas of a divorce, property division. Who gets what, and sometimes it's the easiest part of the case and sometimes, it's the most emotionally charged part of a case. As with any aspect of a divorce, it's going to come down to meaning how hard it is to resolve.

It's going to come down to preparation, education and reasonableness. What do I mean? Preparation, you need to do the work necessary to understand how big that pie is, to figure out what all the assets are. Identify those assets. That way, you have real numbers to work with. You know what types of assets we're dealing with. You know the total value of the estate, the marital assets and then, you can start doing what I'm going to call the heavy lifting, the hard work to figure out who's going to keep what. So that's the first part. Then there's the education part.

You need to get educated as to what a reasonable position regarding division of property is. And it's hard, I'm not going to lie. It's difficult sometimes when you're dealing with a standard like equitable division of property. Like I said before, it doesn't necessarily mean equal. It means the court has a lot of discretion to determine what's fair and reasonable in your case. It could be 50/50. It could be 60/40, 70/30, 80/20. Oftentimes, the court will lean towards a 50/50 split. So, you need to educate yourself and that's not even that easy because in terms of the education, some of it, there's almost like the difference between art and science, right?

Meaning there's no scientific approach where you can just mathematically say, "Oh, here's your situation and this is what or likely what a judge would do." There is a little bit of like I was saying before, art to it. Meaning, all right, now we need to figure out your situation. Let's figure out ... basically, learn more about your marriage, learn more about the estate, learn more about where these assets came from, how are they acquired? Let's think in terms of income levels. Is one party going to be able to replenish, like let's say it's, "Well, let's do a 50/50." Well that's amazing because your spouse makes $0 and you're going to be working for the next 15 years. You're going to be able to rebuild those assets very quickly.

So maybe the other party should get more than 50 or vice versa. The other party is asking for 80% because you're working, making a good amount of money, but you're ... whatever age you're about to retire, she knows or he knows you are about to retire and basically, at that point, your income will be zero. So the argument of you have enough income to replenish quickly is not an accurate, fair argument to make because you are at or well past your retirement age. Sometimes it's not a matter of just a voluntary retirement. Sometimes there are people who are like, "Look, I am X years old. I have been told I have six more months." In other words, it's almost in what I do, it's a mandatory type retirement.

You have to think in those terms. You have to identify and educate yourself as to what needs to be done and how to do it. And then, you need to be reasonable. The more unreasonable you are, the higher the guarantee is that the other party's going to take a position, counter to that and they will either stick to their guns on an issue or taking a reasonable position, or they may even swing in the opposite direction and they become unreasonable. I'm not saying give away the farm, I'm not saying let the other party take advantage of you. That's where the education comes in. Educate yourself and then, be ready to take reasonable positions that hopefully will lead you down the path of settlement.

Rather than lead you into a bigger uglier fight. So you need to ID all of the assets. Current values, if there are accounts, then you need to get the most current statements, you need to understand what kind of accounts they are, the current values. Then you can start looking at the type of asset it is. Meaning is it a marital asset subjected vision or is it separate? Marital is defined here as anything that you've brought into the marriage or earned during the marriage, except for property obtained through gift or inheritance. Separate is anything you brought into the marriage or that you obtained during the marriage from gifts or inheritance.

Okay, well that's fairly simple, but as with every rule, it seems, they're going to be not exceptions or well, I guess you could call it an exception, but there are rules to that. So you've IDed the property. Now, you're saying, "Okay, well here's some property that I brought into the marriage. I brought this house into the marriage. I want my house." Okay. Was it paid for when you got married? Did you have a mortgage? Because if you had a mortgage, every mortgage payment you made using money you were earning during the marriage, you were building a marital interest. So now, the computation becomes a little more complex because we have to figure out, "Okay, there's a separate property component, but there's also a marital component."

So we have to think of those things. It does get more complex, but you have to think ... also, let's say it's ... well, I have an account, had an account before I got married. There was $10,000 in it and there's 10,000 now. I want my 10,000. Okay, well let's talk about the history and the historical use of that account. Was there something called commingling? The way I like to describe it is this, you have a bucket, you get married in that bucket. You have 100 pennies. Now, if you take that bucket, you put it into a safe somewhere, you don't touch it, don't take money out, put money in, nothing. And after 10 years of marriage, you're unfortunately getting a divorce.

And basically, you pull out that bucket. Can you say that the pennies in that bucket are the exact same pennies that were there when you got married? You can. Now, the alternate situation. Let's say you have that bucket, you have it in your bedroom, and every day, you take a penny, put a penny. Take a penny, put a penny. All right. After 10 years of taking and putting, can you say that the pennies in that bucket are the exact same pennies you had when you got married? You can't. I mean, if you're really anal and you looked at the dates on every one of those pennies, you're probably going to see some newer pennies. You're going to see that it's not all the same pennies.

You have commingled, marital assets, pennies that you've obtained during the marriage with separate assets, the pennies you had and brought into the marriage. By co-mingling, you may have destroyed, not only ... let's even say you could identify and say, "Well, 50 of them were separate and 50 of them are new, marital." You may have destroyed the separate nature of the entire account. That entire bucket now may be marital. If you have a house and it's in your name and you brought it in and it's paid for and all that and then, you transfer the name into the other party as well or I've seen for tax reasons, liability issues, whatever, you have now transferred it to the other party and only their name.

Well, any separate property argument you had may be gone because you voluntarily in essence, gifted a marital interest to the other party. You're basically saying to the court by doing that, I was okay with ... even though they had no real claim, "I'm okay with them having a claim." So you have to identify the assets. You need to determine values. Then you need to look at separate property and marital property values of these assets. And that can be very difficult. It's definitely difficult when someone is like, I don't understand. I had these things for years and why am I not getting a 100% value? And it's like, well, because of the things that happened that unfortunately affected the separate property claims that you want to make.

And that's where education comes in. So talking with an attorney to identify those issues, to understand what you can do, should do, shouldn't do. That's the value. The commingling issue, it comes up all the time. All these issues come up all the time. As you can imagine, it's one of the four core areas because asset division is so common. It's one of the most common parts of a divorce. All right. You may not always have kids. You may not always have to pay child support because there are no kids involved, but everybody has the toaster or the TV or the couch or the accounts, whatever. Asset division oftentimes, and the same thing goes for debt, we didn't talk about debt today, but debt division, it's the same thing. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Hopefully this helps. Thanks for listening.