The most difficult aspects of property division

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So from a financial perspective, in a divorce case, we have three main, sort of typically three main financial issues. One is child support, two is alimony, and three is property division. Property division, in simple terms, is basically what is in the marital pot. And within that marital pot, there’s different types of assets. There’s readily liquid assets. There are assets that could be held in closely held businesses. There are assets in retirement accounts, there’s assets in, you know, silent partnerships. All those are valued sort of differently. And something as simple, believe it or not, as coming up with a value for a marital residence. We may have a residence that may be appraised for 8 million by one appraiser, may be appraised by another one at $5 million. So how do you reconcile that?

And this just happened in one of our cases where were dealing with a lake house in Lake Burden and the appraisals were millions of dollars apart. And the judge, to his credit, said, look, they’re both well qualified appraisers. I don’t know why the differences and I can’t rectify the differences. So I don’t feel comfortable making the decision as to whether one appraisal or the other was right. I don’t even feel comfortable with averaging those. So what did he do? He just said, got to put it on the market for 30 days and you will accept the highest, you know, price and that, you know, and both parties, you know, especially one party was really upset because they wanted to keep that house.

But again, that’s the risk of going to court, that the impossible, that the improbable may happen, and that’s something that you have to consider.

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