Divorces not only take a mental toll on spouses, but can take a financial one as well. This is especially the case when the spouses share high value assets like homes, pensions or investment accounts. If you’re not cautious in dividing up these types of assets, it’s possible that you may either lose valuable assets or not gain rightful access to ones you deserve.
In addition to hiring an attorney to represent their interests, couples with assets such as these can also benefit from having a valuation expert working on their case. This type of professional, who’s often accountant with specialized credentials or expertise, is well-skilled in providing accurate assessments of a couple’s joint property.
To arrive at values, they use based commonly accepted methodologies and metrics. They’re well equipped to address tax implications of making certain investment-related decisions as well.
In having a team that includes both a valuation expert and a high asset divorce attorney working for you, you can ensure you’re in compliance with both legal and tax obligations. There are many of these that inherently come with the transfer of ownership of these types of accounts and taking distributions from them.
Although many couples don’t think of a life insurance policy as an asset, for particularly wealthy individuals, it becomes one. That’s because, over time, the policy can accumulate significant wealth within it. It’s that accumulation of wealth that some spouses aren’t aware that the other one has.
Many times this happens because the insurance policy is held within a trust. A high asset divorce attorney is particularly attuned to finding out if one of these policies exists and the valuation expert is keen to hone in on its overall value.
Another area in which in can be helpful to have both professionals working on your divorce case is when you’re attempting to determine just how much spousal support to demand in order to maintain your lifestyle. Many times it’s necessary to conduct a lifestyle analysis in order to determine that.
A lifestyle analysis involves assessing how you handled spending during the marriage. In learning more about that, it’ll be easier to reach a settlement that both spouses may see as fair.
If you’re considering divorcing your spouse and you want to learn more about how the demise of your relationship will impact your assets, then a Fort Myers divorce attorney can advise you of just that.
Source: Forbes, “Getting the most from a high-dollar divorce,” Russ Alan Prince, accessed Sep. 14, 2017
