Info

Divorce and Your Money - #1 Divorce Podcast

Visit us at https://divorceandyourmoney.com. Join Shawn Leamon, MBA and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst as he breaks down divorce with practical advice to protect your financial interests. With more than 500,000 listeners and 200 episodes, Divorce and Your Money is the podcast #1 divorce podcast in the nation. Get your questions answered, checklist your way to financial freedom, and safeguard your new future with an expert’s help… because you and your family are worth it.
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
2021
November
October
August
July
May
February
January


2020
December
September
August
July
June
May
March
February
January


2019
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


All Episodes
Archives
Now displaying: October, 2019
Oct 27, 2019

Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the USA and get personalized help. Learn about coaching services here.

 

One of the challenges in divorce is making sure that separate property stays separate. And it could be the case that you're trying to prove what's being claimed as separate property is actually marital property. Now it's a bit of an advanced topic, but an important one, and just a reminder, and I said this in the previous episode, if something is marital property, it means you have to split the value of it between you and your spouse during divorce. And if it's separate property, then the person whose separate property it belongs to gets to keep it and you don't really discuss it at all as far as the divorce goes.

One of the most common types of separate property is an inheritance where the parents of one spouse gives them a bunch of money. He may be married or not married at the time and that inheritance is a common type of separate property that exists. Another time it could be a retirement account or a house bought before the marriage.

Now if you didn't listen to the previous episode on tracing and how to trace separate and marital property, that is important context for this episode. But also I want to give you some different tips and how to keep separate property separate and how to maybe prove that that separate property is actually marital property and ways to do that cleanly and things that you can think about. Because also one of the important points when it comes to separate and marital property is sometimes not all of the property is separate. So sometimes a piece of property, let's just say it's worth 100 bucks, could be an inheritance, could be a retirement account or something else and say it's $100 today. Well it could be the case that 10 of those $100 are actually marital property or 50 of those $100 are marital property or all of that hundred is marital property.

It's not always an all or nothing thing and so there are some gray areas and I want to show you how to avoid the gray areas depending upon who you are or actually to ensure that there are some gray areas so you can get your appropriate share. Now the other thing I always have to say, particularly with this type of an episode, is state laws vary a lot in terms of the languages they use and how they discuss whether something is separate or marital property. So make sure you ask your attorney some of the mechanics of the particular asset that you're discussing when it comes to this. But I'm going to give you three tips in this episode on how to keep separate property separate. And that's what I'm going to focus on. One is to avoid co-mingling. Two is to keep track of income and dividends and three is a prenup or postnup.

So let's get into these. Let's start with point number one which is avoid co-mingling. It's a term you've probably heard before and it just means keep something that's separate property, always in a separate account with only your name on it. And so if you get an inheritance, let's just say a $100 inheritance, because we can all do math on $100. Let's say you get an inheritance of $100 and you got it a decade ago. Make sure that that inheritance only went to a bank account and stays in a bank account in your name only. And then the other element to that is don't ever move those funds to a joint account because once you move those funds to a joint account and they get mixed up with a bunch of joint assets, it makes it very, very complicated, expensive and challenging to go back in time and try and figure out how much of that asset is marital property and how much of that asset is separate property.

The second point to think about is that you need to keep track of income and dividends, so it's not just enough to keep money in a separate account to keep that property separate. Sometimes, depending upon your state laws, the income from that account or the dividends that come in from the account or other things related to that could become marital property and they don't stay separate.

So if you get, let's just say you have an account with $100 in it and every year you get one extra dollar in income on that account. So after 10 years you've got $10 of income. Well, you need to keep track of that income every year and maybe even deposit that income into a separate bank account. It can still keep your name and your name only on it, but when you keep track of it in a separate account, it makes it easier to figure out, "Hey, that portion of the account may ultimately be marital property, therefore let's keep it." And that way it's easy to track it and you don't have to go get a bunch of forensic experts to say, "Oh yeah, here's where all the income came in."

Some of the terminology used for this is an income sweep account, if you go to a bank or something like that, and that means that the income is swept into the various portions of your account. The way to do that, or so if you're on the other side of that issue, even if an account is mostly separate, you need to go back and ask your spouse or get the records to see if any income came in from that account because that income may be marital property for you to discuss and split up.

And so that's where one of the levels of complication comes in. But to the extent you can avoid it, if you're the person who owns that account, you want to keep it clear if any income came in or dividends came in and make sure that that is separate. It just depends on the state laws whether or not that income is considered separate or marital. And so you need to ask your attorney how it applies in your state and your situation. But that's something to think about.

The third thing to think of, if you are able to have some foresight and that is to get a prenup or a postnup. Now, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably are not thinking about a prenup, but you might have one that exists, in which case it would be important to think about what's in that prenup. But also you might be able to investigate a postnup or postnuptial agreement, in which case you can designate certain assets as separate in the event that you get divorced. And one of the places I actually see a lot of postnuptial agreements and a lot of prenuptial agreements is second marriages, and even a postnup.

If you're getting married after 40 or 50 it's very possible to go back and get a postnup and get that. And if you agreed to a postnup, you can designate a particular inheritance or designate a business or a home or retirement account or whatever the asset is as separate property in the event that you were to get divorced. So that's something else to consider.

And if you're on good terms with the spouse and maybe a divorce isn't for another several years, you could perhaps, depending upon the situation, have that discussion about a postnuptial agreement and go from there in terms of protecting yourself and protecting a particular asset as it goes on, as time goes on, and keeping that separate property separate.

Now one last warning, one last topic and that is is even if you do everything perfectly, it can still get brought up in a divorce and it can still be a fight and a discussion that comes up as part of the divorce process or at a minimum, the opposing, your spouse's attorney can ask for records related to a certain asset even if you did everything properly. So one of the things I talk with you about all the time on coaching calls is, "You kept it separate, it was clear it's separate, but your spouse's attorney is getting a bunch of records on the particular asset," or it could be a house, could be inheritance, whatever, and you get worried. Well, if you did everything right, there's nothing to worry about.

Now if you're on the other side and you didn't do everything right, there are certainly some things to think about and things to prepare for. But, and there might be some more expense involved, but if you did everything right, so be it. The way that I look at this on a different way is even if you do everything right and you did everything right and your spouse's attorney is asking for records on things, it's their job to.

And so your job is to make sure you have all the records and have everything cleanly set up so that there's no question when it comes up. It's their job to question everything and try and get more assets for their client. So even if you do things perfectly, you're not necessarily out of the woods, but if you don't do things perfectly, it can really complicate things down the line. And so what I want you to do with this episode is make sure you're thinking about and you understand and you have a concept of all the issues you might be facing when it comes to separate property or marital property and how to keep things separate or how to challenge whether something is actually separate or marital property. And the three tips are avoid co-mingling the assets, keep track of income and dividends and finally to consider the prenup or postnup as it comes to getting divorced.

 

Oct 13, 2019

Visit us at divorceandyourmoney.com for the #1 divorce resources in the USA and get personalized help. Learn about coaching services here.

 

In divorce, one of the big questions is whether something is separate property or marital property. If it's separate property, than the person who had it before divorce keeps it. And if it's marital property, the value needs to be split amongst the people divorcing. And so, one of the questions that we deal with a lot and I help people navigate is how do prove whether something is separate property or marital property. And what do I mean?

Well, the most common is an inheritance. If an inheritance was given to one person, is that still considered separate property or is it marital property? Inheritances, sometimes they're small, but sometimes they are very big because they can be a parent's lifetime of savings. Could be something like a retirement account, where there was money in the account before you got married and then it grew during the marriage. But how much of that is marital property that you split and how much of that is considered separate property?

What about the house? Same deal is what if you bought it before you were married. Does a person who bought the home beforehand own the house or not. It could be things like trust, business interest. There's a lot of different assets and many different questions that can arise when trying to determine whether something is separate or marital property. It's a big deal because if you prove that something's separate property, it doesn't get split, but if you prove it's marital property, the value does get split as part of the divorce process. But the big challenge is, is how do you prove something is one type of property or another.

And it's an important discussion and something that we work with on a lot of our divorce calls or coaching calls, I should say, for people going through divorce or preparing to go through divorce. And the difference or figuring out the answer can often mean the difference between hundreds of thousands of dollars that one spouse gets or has to give up or even millions of dollars in some cases depending upon the asset.

The problem with this subject is it's really complicated and I'm going to discuss a term called tracing. It's T-R-A-C-I-N-G, tracing. And that's going to be the subject of today's episode. And it's the process of figuring out whether if something is separate or marital property. And to compound things further is sometimes an asset that you're discussing or even a debt in some cases that you're discussing can be both separate and marital property at the same time. And so, figuring out what it is can be extra complicated. And really for the sake of this episode, I want to focus really on just two things. I want to introduce you to the subject, but the two things I want to focus on are one, getting the appropriate documentation. And two is hiring the appropriate financial experts.

So, the first and biggest and most complex challenge with tracing assets is having the documentation. And for the sake of the example, I started the episode with different types of examples, but we're going to take a retirement account for the sake of an example as I walk through this episode because it's easy to illustrate the point as to why this gets complicated. One of the biggest issues with getting the documentation is that it can be old. If you've been married 10 years, then you have to go back and get statements from 10 years ago. If you've been married 20 years, then it could be 20 years ago. If it's been 40 years, then you're trying to get documentation from 40 years ago. And as businesses change, as the world changes, a lot of the institutions that you may have had at the beginning don't have those account statements at in their records anymore. Some times they might only have a year or three years or five years.

And so, trying to go back and get 10 or 20 years or 30 years of data is very difficult. But the important part is, or why this is so important, is that you need to be able to track where every dollar came and went to the extent possible over the timeline of your marriage. Now, here's a really important question to ask your attorney because state laws really differ on this subject, but many states have laws in place that property is assumed to be marital unless you can prove it as separate. And so, you really need to be careful because other states have different rules regarding this. So I don't want to generalize too much on this point, but this is why getting the documentation is important is if you can't prove or oftentimes if a spouse can't prove that the property is indeed separate, it's marital property. It needs to be split.

Now, depending upon what side of the issue you're on, that could be good for you or that could be bad for you. And we're going to talk about some ways around it. But the point of that is you need to be keeping good records and you need to be keeping your account statement. And often times, if you walk into your local bank or you call Fidelity or you're financial firm up and you ask for records, they might say, "Well, we only have a couple of years worth and that's all we can provide." Well, that doesn't really help too much, but believe it or not, you might just have to keep digging and they might actually have more records than they will initially tell you. One of the things I always encourage you to do on coaching calls is don't stop at the first no, where they say they only have X amount of records. Most financial firms have many, many more years of records than they will initially tell you. The challenge is you have to figure out who will provide you access to them and how to get access to them, particularly if it's for your account.

For a variety of reasons, they are legally required to keep many years of data. And sometimes it's in paper format, sometimes it's in a warehouse somewhere, but they often have that information for you to get. And so even if you get a first no when trying to get the financial data, don't worry. There will be more opportunities if you keep digging and it may require some help with an attorney regarding a subpoena to see officially what that firm has in terms of data.

Now, ideally also for yourself, if you're thinking about this, I encourage you to keep good records, keep backups of all of your records, particularly for important accounts over the years because having a snapshot of those can come in handy when it comes to something like tracing. Now, there's also an easier solution to all of this and this is... I don't want to get your hopes up too much because this easy solution does not work in all cases. And when it works it's great, but to be fair, most of the time it doesn't work, but sometimes it does and it is worth bringing up. And particularly if you can avoid a bunch of legal fees and expensive fees, I'm going to get to fees and financial experts in the next section of this episode. But if you get this easy solution, I encourage you to use it and it works for both parties.

If you come up with a reasonable guess. And that is that you guess, you estimate. You make an estimate of how much of a certain asset was separate and how much of a certain asset was marital. So, if you know that there was an inheritance and it might have come 15 years ago, that you got an inheritance or a spouse got an inheritance and it might've been at the time $112,363. Well, no one really remembers the exact amount, but if you both think it was around about a $100,000 and you're willing to agree that it was about a $100,000, and you can move on, then move on. Rather than trying to track down, you're going to spend that extra $10,000 or $15,000 just trying to track down all the records and you might've been better off just estimating.

Now, it doesn't always work that you come up with a reasonable estimate and there's reasons in the divorce process you might want to estimate too high or too low, but if it gets you to a reasonable point. And my whole goal with everyone's divorce is to get this done as quickly as possible in good enough shape and as reasonable as possible. And if you can do this reasonably, and it's an ethical guess, I always say we don't want to screw anyone, but if the estimate is reasonable and your both willing to agree to the separate property estimate, that is the easy solution. But that doesn't work in all cases. And oftentimes, this is very complicated in terms of tracing assets, as are many issues in divorce. Now the other question is... So, part one is just gathering the documentation, while part two is getting the information and how do you get someone to analyze the information that you may be looking at.

And that's with the help of a financial expert. And so, most attorneys have good relationships with financial experts, particularly good attorneys will certainly have a good relationship with a financial expert. And it's usually someone who is a CPA or a forensic accountant and their job is to trace assets. Their job is to figure out where money came from and where it went and what value is there to be split for the purpose of the divorce. And the first thing they're going to ask for is come up with whatever documentation you have. Sometimes when looking at the documentation, they might have to make some estimates of their own. They might say, well, the account grew at X amount. We don't think there were any deposits or withdrawals. The market went up this amount. So, we think that 70% of this portion of this account is marital and only 30% is separate.

Or they might go the other way around. But the point is a financial expert is there to try and make the best estimate or best guess or use their expertise to figure out precisely in some cases how much, what assets are available. And the other thing... When you come with a financial expert, one of the things I always say is if you can get a neutral financial expert to do the tracing that both lawyers and both of you as clients agree upon and people divorcing agree upon, then almost always you should go with the neutral. But if your spouse, for example, hires a financial expert and they spend $5,000 or $10,000 or $30,000 or $50,000 looking at these records or more in some cases, but if they go through this process of looking at the records and the details and everything else, I always say this. If your spouse is writing a check to someone and they're working for your spouse, how do you think the conclusions going to look?

Most of the time, the vast majority of the time, the conclusion they're going to come up with is going to be in your spouse's favor. And so, if that's the case, you're going to likely want your own financial expert to analyze things as well and come up with their conclusion. I'm willing to bet that that conclusion will be more akin to what you are looking for on your side. All of that said is if we have two financial experts on a top of two divorce attorneys on top of any other number of people that get involved in the divorce process, it becomes very expensive.

One last section I want to cover when it comes to tracing is that tracing is not an all or nothing proposition. It's not the case that something is often 100% marital or 100% separate. Sometimes, an account that may be mostly separate still may have marital portions to it. And the episode after this is going to be on how do you keep separate property separate and also basically the ways to figure out if separate property indeed has marital components as well to it, so it'll help both sides depending upon what issue you're facing. But one of the things that could happen, and let's just say you got... Let me use very, very simple math. Let's say you got an inheritance of $100 and you put it in your separate account. And that was 10 years ago. Well over time, that $100 grew to $110 because you were getting interest or maybe dividends or whatever the case from that $100 account.

Well, it could be the case that $10 of income is actually marital property, but the original $100 is still separate property. And what you'd have to figure out is, well, how much did you actually get and how much income came in? And so, it's another layer of complication that even though tracing sometimes could mean an asset is 100% separate. Sometimes it can mean it's 100% marital, but other times it could be a gray area. And you need to be prepared for the gray area and understand the nuances and the complexities of the gray area, is yet another thing that you may be thinking about in the divorce process.

The point is it's complicated. You have to get your documentation. You need an expert to help you interpret the information and go through the information and provide an expert opinion that you could use during negotiations or in court if it comes to that. But you need to really understand, or I want to introduce you to this topic, because it's something that's very relevant in many of the coaching calls. And I want you to be informed and have some things to think about as you consider what assets you're actually going to be splitting as part of the divorce process.

1