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Tips For Dividing Collectibles In A Divorce

15 January 2016

Yvonne Russell

If you are going through a divorce, chances are good that you are going to need to make some hard decisions about who gets which collectibles. If both you and your spouse are avid collectors of the same items, it is going to be especially difficult because sentimentality is going to come into play and make the decision-making very difficult. Here are some tips for getting through that process with the least issues possible.

1. Sell Everything and Divvy Up the Money Made From the Sales

Your first option is to sell all of your collectibles and then divvy up whatever you made from the sale. You can have an auction, go through online sales, or sell your entire collection to a person who is interested in the same items. This is usually the easiest way to make sure that the collection is divided equally, but it can also be one of the most difficult tasks if you or your spouse have any sentimental feelings with regards to the collections. You and your spouse will have to decide together to sell the collection and the method by which the collection is sold. You may need to consider having an independent third party come in and sell off all of the items in order to make sure that the transactions are fair.

2. Divide Up the Collection

Another option is to split the collection in half. This is going to involve taking your collection or collections to an independent company that will be able to assign each item a relative market value and an absolute value that can be used to quantify the entire collection. Once the collection has been quantified, you can divide up the collection by assigning pieces to each spouse based on value so that the end value is relatively equal on both sides. If one partner feels much more strongly about keeping the collection together than the other partner, the partner that cares can pay the other person for his or her share of the collection.

3. Deal With Gifts

Finally, you need to take into account whether or not any of the items in the collection were given to a specific partner as a gift. These are not part of the dividing process usually, but can be part of the valuation process if the owner of the item does not care about the gift and would be willing to sell it to his or her partner in exchange for cash. You may need to provide testimony to the courts in order to make sure that you can prove that an item is a gift.

For more information, talk to a divorce attorney who can help you through the process.

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