In most cases, my clients have been with their husband for a number of years, accumulating a number of possessions – both consequential and inconsequential. Though we don’t often spend much time dividing the sheets and bath towels, other things, especially big ticket items like houses and cars, do occupy a fair amount of time...
Property Dispute
Use numbers: when settlement isn’t settling Mike and Karen are getting a divorce. In Karen’s initial consultation, I discovered that they owned a $300,000 house with $100,000 in equity. They each had 401(k) accounts, earned entirely during the marriage, worth about $125,000 each. They had about $60,000 in savings, and $5,000 in their checking account....
Tension is normal when you and your husband are trying to decide how to divide up years and years of belongings. I usually tell my clients not to worry about personal possessions, but that’s easier said than done. After all, these things are the things that surround you every day. In many ways, these things...
Marital debts, just like marital assets, are divided through equitable distribution. This means that property is divided between the parties based on what the court thinks is fair. Equitable distribution means that property can be divided 50/50, but that is not necessarily required. These days, we see a lot of divorces that are more about...
Separate property is not divided equally in divorce. In fact, it’s not divided at all. Marital property is defined as anything you earned or purchased during the marriage. Separate property, on the other hand, is property that either of you owned prior to your marriage, or anything that was given to you by gift or...
When you and your husband sit down to try to divide your personal property, it can feel like an epic power struggle. You feel very strongly that you should get to keep some thing or other but, unfortunately, he wants to keep it just as badly—or, at least, he wants to keep you from getting...
You’ve probably heard that, in Virginia, the way property is divided is through “equitable distribution.” This means that, when a judge makes a determination about who deserves to receive what, he is supposed to consider what is fair based on the negative and positive monetary and nonmonetary contributions each person made to the marriage. Normally,...
I see cases more and more frequently where the wives are earning more than their husbands. It makes sense, after all, because they say that more women graduate college and apply to law school than men. However, despite our creativity and general brilliance, we have significant biological disadvantages that make it more difficult for us...