How to Keep Your Property Through Divorce
Recently, a man said to me, “If she goes after my pension, she’s going to have a fight.”
I’ve heard this, and statements like it, many times. From men and from women.
You have a business, a pension, a cabin inherited from your parents during your marriage. You don’t want to share it. It’s yours! Yet the law says you must.
What do you do to protect yourself?
After all, you worked for it. Or it came from your parents. Naturally, you think, IT’S MINE.
This is a worthy belief. You worked for it or you inherited it. Why does your spouse think you need to share?
The law (at least in Canada) says property acquired during a marriage or spousal relationship is shared equally.
In America, there are states where the law says property acquired during a marriage is to be shared equitably. “Equitably” means fair.
For the person who acquired the property or who was given it by family, equal or equitable sharing doesn’t feel fair. It feels completely wrong.
From this space, it’s easy to get into a battle in court.
The most likely outcome if there’s a court battle: you’ll “lose” half of this piece of property, AND you’ll pay, on average, $54,000 in legal fees.
If the property is complicated – say, a farm or a business, instead of a pension – I estimate that most likely you’ll be spending at least $200,000 on legal fees.
If you get in a legal battle over keeping your property, you’re going to lose, and it’s going to be costly. Unfortunately, this is reality.
That’s what I told the man I spoke to yesterday. It’s what I’d tell you. It’s what I tell my clients, when we look at options in light of their goals.
We look at E + R = O.
E + R = O is a principle contained in the book, The Success Principles by Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer.
Here’s what it means:
E = an Event
R = your Response to that Event
O = the Outcome
Looking at these, where do you have the most control – over the Event or over your Response?
Especially in the case of divorce. Your marriage has ended and the law states that spouses divide property equally. You, one person, can’t change the law. It is what it is. It is outside your control.
If you go to court, the judge will order an equal distribution of property, or the value in it (often requiring a cash payment, or a sharing or a pension). This is the outcome.
The place where you have the most control is in your response to the event.
Ironically, if you accept that you have to share your pension / family cottage / family business / farm, your options increase.
You can negotiate sharing less than half of the value.
That recently occurred with a couple of my clients. One wanted to keep the value of a family cottage. She did so by negotiating. In another case, a client with a farm is paying half of the amount a court would order for the farm’s value.
All because they decided to work with me. I helped them accept what the law says (changed their responses), instead of fighting something that can’t control. It all began with booking a free consultation.
For these people, the law no longer was something to fight against; it became something to work within. It became possible to have a good conversation with the former spouse. Everything shifted.
The spouses shifted their responses, and saw that receiving something different than what the law says was the most fair result for their families.
So the next time you tell yourself that your pension / family cottage / investments / business / farm is yours, and that you’re not going to share it, do yourself a favour and stop yourself. Realize you need to change your response. Then you’ll be able to keep more of it than you would if you go to court.
If you want to learn more about applying E + R = O to your divorce, so you can preserve as much of your most valuable property as possible, book a consultation. We’ll see if I can help.