Valuation of Property
Assets and/or liabilities must be appropriately valued before they can be distributed by and between the parties. The accurate valuation of assets and liabilities is accordingly central to appropriately resolving and or adjudicated a divorce. If the parties cannot agree as to the value of any particular asset and liability, appraisals should be secured and shared; no allocation of an asset or liability can be established without determining the value of same. Accordingly, appraisals are generally secured for assets that are not being sold to third parties; the marital home, other parcels of real estate, any business concerns, retirement accounts, etc. are assigned values by experts retained by one or both of the divorcing spouses. Generally, we advise our clients to retain joint experts; so that both parties, hopefully, feel comfortable with the methods and resulting recommendations received from said experts. The recent passage of the collaborative divorce statute will hopefully assist parties in determining the values to be assigned marital assets without the costs and acrimony of litigation; the new statute contemplates valuation experts working together to reach an agreement as to values the parties can utilize in the context of their collaborative divorce.