At the end of your marriage, you will face certain universal concerns. You will undoubtedly worry about your financial stability during and after the divorce, as well as what will happen with your assets and debts. If you have children, parenting arrangements for them can also be a major concern.
The better you understand California’s family laws, the more comfortable you will likely feel with pursuing a divorce. California uses the community property standard when it comes to dividing your property, which means that anything you acquire during the marriage belongs to both spouses.
In order for the courts to manage that process on your behalf, they require that you submit a thorough and accurate inventory of all of your assets and debts.
Don’t omit items due to lack of interest
Perhaps the biggest mistake that people can make when creating an inventory of their marital assets is the decision to exclude specific assets that they have no interest in retaining. You don’t need to want to drive your spouse’s classic car to acknowledge that it represents a substantial financial value. The same is true of any valuable collections, including fine art or a well-stocked wine cellar.
Even the jewelry purchased by one spouse for the other during the marriage is technically part of the marital property and therefore subject to division. Creating a thorough list of all the assets both you and your spouse acquired during your marriage, even those that you have no interest in actually retaining, will allow for the more accurate estimation of your marital estate and a fairer breakdown who gets what in the final asset division outcome.
