Marital Balance Sheet

Dividing the assets and debts is a balancing act.   How do you and your spouse divide everything equally?   A good analogy is to compare your assets to a small group of trees you and your spouse planted.   You planted the trees the day after your marriage and now it’s time to divide them.   You want to divide the trees evenly, and there are several ways to do this.  You might cut each tree in half.   Or, you might divide the trees equally by only taking whole trees.  The preferred method is the whole trees, but this is not always possible.   For example,  you can sell your house, and split the equity evenly (this is a cutting the trees example).    What if selling isn’t an option because someone wants to continue living in it.  One spouse may keep the house, while the other spouse gets their 401K (this is a keeping the whole trees example).

To help with this task we created a Marital Balance Sheet.   You list all the assets, and debts (debts should be divided as well) acquired during the marriage.  Then you figure out the net value of the asset or debt.   Then you  start dividing the assets or debts and watch the total at the bottom.    One spouse can take 100% of the house,  while the 401K is divided 60% / 40%.   With the balance sheet you can play with different scenarios to see how everything equals out.    You are looking to get equal totals of “Community Husband”, and “Community Wife” at the bottom.

The “Separate Husband” and “Separate Wife” totals do not need to be equal.  These are the assets and debts which don’t need to be divided equally.  Community property is anything you and your spouse acquired together after the date of the marriage.   Separate property is anything acquired before the marriage.   There are a few other separate property exceptions like property inherited, or acquired from an injury.   In the balance sheet, most assets or debts should be divided either “Community Husband”, or “Community Wife”.  “Separate Husband”, or “Separate Wife” is used for assets that are considered separate property.   If you don’t know if the property is separate property then talk with your divorce lawyer for more details.

When possible you want to divide assets with tax implications evenly.   For example,  a 401K assets is not the same as a cash asset because the 401K asset has tax implications.    Some accountants would say the 401K asset is not worth as much as cash because you still need to pay taxes on it when you withdraw it.   This balance sheet doesn’t take into account tax implications.  That is something you need to discuss with an attorney or accountant.

The balance sheet can be printed or saved to your desktop.   Right Lawyers doesn’t preserve any of this data after you close the page.