Spouses working to separate their lives in the early stages of a divorce may find the process overwhelming. It is common for people to make unnecessary and even problematic concessions during property division negotiations to speed up the process.
One of the most common errors involves personal property. As a rule, income the spouses earn while married is marital income. Any assets that they purchase with that income or with shared credit are marital assets that the spouses may need to divide. Equitable distribution rules may apply to any assets acquired during marriage — not just the largest and most valuable resources with shared ownership.
Even in cases where only one of the spouses uses certain resources, their personal property may still require consideration to achieve a fair property division settlement. The failure to value and address personal property during divorce can lead to an imbalanced allocation of marital property.
What assets are personal property?
Personal property consists of most belongings that people can physically touch and move. A home is not personal property, but the furniture in it is. Personal property can include collections, tools, clothes and home furnishings. Frequently, each spouse has a sizable collection of various types of personal property.
Those resources can all contribute significantly to the overall value of the marital estate. Personal property can be worth tens of thousands of dollars or more. Especially in scenarios where one spouse has accumulated far more personal property than the other during a marriage, simply agreeing to retain personal property could lead to an unfair final settlement.
Spouses may need to estimate the value of jewelry, designer clothing and other personal property to ensure that the terms that they set for asset division when they divorce are as fair as possible. While one spouse may have no interest in claiming the personal possessions of the other, they may need to consider what those resources are worth when negotiating terms for other marital assets.
Proper asset identification and evaluation are critical during divorce proceedings. Overlooking personal property due to disinterest in those resources is a common economic mistake that people make during divorce – particularly when they don’t have experienced legal guidance.
