Dividing the house, cars, bank accounts, and 401(k)s can be hard, but divorcing couples often get really stuck dividing up the “stuff”. Too many couples spend days, weeks, or months struggling to divide the furniture, dishes, Christmas decorations, and family pictures. Be cautious before engaging in fights about common household items, because the fight can cost you big time.
Most people feel pretty attached to their belongings. Sometimes these attachments make sense because certain pieces of property represent emotional ties or relationships. The desk you inherited from Aunt Susie or the Christmas ornaments you made as a child hold a special place in your memory and history. But many of your belongings are not that emotional. Do you have a special attachment to the pasta bowls or the lawn furniture? Probably not.
Before going ten rounds in your divorce negotiations over those pasta bowls, take a breath and step back. It’s time to do a cost/benefit analysis. I know it can feel like something unfair is happening to you when you have to give up things that you own during a divorce but consider the actual value of the item versus the emotional cost and financial cost of attorney and mediator fees you will spend fighting for it. If you can purchase new pasta bowls for less than the fees you will pay your attorney and/or a mediator to ensure that you walk about with those pasta bowls, isn’t that a better deal?
It’s true that you need to look at the personal property division as a whole to make sure that one spouse is not walking away with everything, and the other spouse has to buy all new, but most things are not worth more than the cost to fight for them. Discuss with your attorney before any negotiation what items on the list do have special emotional value or are family heirlooms. It makes sense to spend some attorney fees to fight for things that matter more than money. But ask your attorney to remind you that you did not identify the pasta bowls as “must haves”. Center yourself, agree to give up the bowls and get online immediately looking for beautiful new ones which will be only yours.
