In a simple divorce, both parties may decide to part ways with their own assets and move on. In other cases, this is not an option. In most marriages, both parties contribute to the marriage in different ways. One party may work 60-hour weeks to pay all the bills and provide for everyone’s needs. One party may stay at home with the children, keep the home clean, make meals, and maintain the household order. Most marriages are more of a hybrid. Both parties work and divide household duties in whatever way makes sense for their family.
So, what happens when you get divorced? Do you have to share your retirement savings with your soon-to-be ex-spouse? Do you have to start over from scratch because you stayed at home with the children for 15 years? What about so-called non-divisible assets? How are those considered? Well, the short, typical lawyer’s answer is it depends.
I know, I know. That’s not very helpful! So, with the age-old adage that “it depends” in mind, let’s break down the system Georgia uses to divide assets after divorce: equitable division. Equitable division does not mean equal division. If Georgia were to divide the marital assets and property equally, both parties would get 50% of the total. With equitable division, the division of property takes into account the different, unique factors of the couple to determine how to divide the property.
For example, let’s take stay-at-home parents and homemakers into account. These parties have spent time during the marriage maintaining the household so the other party could focus on work and their career. In Georgia, this does not go unnoticed and unaccounted for. The Court could award the stay-at-home parent more of the assets to acknowledge that they have not been building a career and growing their job skills. This could provide the stay-at-home parent with the cushion necessary to go back to school or begin to re-enter the workforce.
In Georgia, the Court also has the option to take into account severe misconduct in determining the equitable division of a couple’s assets. If one party gambled away large amounts of money or spent recklessly on frivolous, unnecessary purchases, the Court can consider those factors. The Court may also consider who was at fault for the divorce, including for infidelity and other marital misconduct.
When you hire The Manely Firm, P.C. to assist in your divorce, we work to conduct discovery and prepare a full picture of the marital assets and property by creating a marital balance sheet. Once all the assets are on the table, it is much easier to determine how to equitably divide them. This is especially true when one or both parties have non-divisible assets. The most common non-divisible assets that we encounter are pension plans through employment with the State of Georgia or other public entities. These are not divisible in the same way that traditional 401(k) or Roth IRA plans are. Therefore, a marital balance sheet is incredibly useful. We can factor in non-divisible assets as part of one party’s portion of the total assets and divide other assets to compensate for this imbalance.
In short, when trying to figure out how a court will equitably divide your assets, it is important to keep in mind that it depends. Since divorce can get complicated and messy, let our team of lawyers help you work through the issues and roadblocks that may come up when equitably dividing your marital assets.