Before you go any further: assess which situation you are in.

Two very different situations get written about as if they were the same one.  They are not.

If you were not married, notiin a common law situation, and no case has been filed, dividing a household tends to be a private agreement between two adults. No court necessarily has to be involved. You can work through the whole thing yourselves, and most people do. If you were in a common law situation, you may wish to consult with an qualified attorney in your state to find out if there are certain provisions or considerations to be aware of.

If you were legally married, or a divorce or legal separation has been filed, your personal property is considered part of the marital estate. It gets divided as part of the divorce case, under your state's rules, and the result is recorded in your divorce settlement or divorce decree. What the two of you agree to along the way is helpful, but it is not final until it is part of the formal record.

Many states also put automatic restrictions about property in place as soon as a case is filed. Depending on where you live, these rules may limit selling, giving away, or disposing of property while the case is open, and they can apply to both spouses. What these rules cover varies a great deal state by state, so ask your attorney what is in effect in your case before you move, sell, or give away anything of value.

If you were married or in a common law situation, read the rest of this as preparation for dividing property during divorce. You are building a record and working out what you want. The actual division settlement runs through your attorney or a mediator and the court.

Start with a list

Most people begin by talking about a particular item before they can see the full picture. Resist the urge to index on one or two pieces that are super important to you (that sofa!  that ring!  those bedside tables!), at the expense of getting a total view of what is in the household first. 

Make the list first. Go room by room.  Document anything you would notice was missing: furniture, appliances, electronics, cookware, tools, linens, art, sports equipment, holiday decorations, whatever is in the garage and the storage unit. Photograph the items that carry real value (be it monetary value or sentimental value), and photograph their condition. 

This part can be somewhat tedious, and no professional is going to do it for you unless you have gobs of money to spare or a particularly extenuating circumstance where you and/ or your spouse cannot or should not do it yourselves.  Your legal team is unlikely to come over to inventory your garage. A mediator cannot divide a list that does not exist. Any hour spent reconstructing your household gets billed at their rate.

If a blank spreadsheet is more than you can face right now, Divisly walks you through the inventory room by room and prompts you for pieces that many people forget. It produces a photographed, timestamped record in a format attorneys and mediators can work from, which is why some family law professionals send it to clients at intake. It covers property and belongings only (not financial accounts, as those are subject to different rules and handled differently).

Indicate how the item arrived

Once you have the list of personal property items, tag each item one of four ways:

• Mine before. You owned it before the relationship or the marriage.
• Theirs before. They owned it before.
• Acquired together. Bought during the relationship, with shared money or close enough that neither of you would call it one-sided.
• Gift or inherited. Given to one of you, or passed down within one family.

If you and your soon-to-be ex are creating separate inventories, gather this information on your own first before you compare.  Most of the list will match. 

Disagreements here are usually not dishonesty. Memory tends to reconstruct purchases in a self-serving direction. Where a receipt or a card statement exists, find it. Where none does, note the disagreement on the list and keep going.

If you were married, that fourth category is worth flagging carefully. How states treat property owned before a marriage, or inherited or gifted to one spouse, varies, and so does what happens when that property gets mixed in with shared property over the years. That is a question for your attorney. Your part is to mark the items to the best of your ability and secure any documentation you have.

Monetary value matters less than you might think

Every object in the house has three prices attached to it, and arguments ensue when two people quote different ones.

• What you paid. Rarely considered relevant. The couch you bought for $3,000 ten years ago is not worth $3,000 today.  
• What it would sell for today. Usually a fraction of the original purchase price. Look at completed sales, not asking prices.
• What it would cost to replace. Often higher than resale, because you would be buying it brand new.

For ordinary household goods, the working number is generally closer to what the item would sell for today, not what it cost. That surprises people who have mentally banked the purchase price. Many courts will tell the parties to assign “garage sale values” to most household property items they have, outside of big ticket items with external valuation (think Kelly Blue Book for estimating a vehicle’s value).

Art, jewelry, collections, instruments, antiques, and tools can be different, and sometimes call for an appraisal. Mark those on the list rather than guessing at them.

Items you both want

For the items you both might want, it helps to settle on an approach before you know which items you’ll need to negotiate about.

• Alternating picks. One person picks, then the other, back and forth until the list is empty.
• One keeps it, the other is made whole with another item. The item goes to one person and the value is balanced somewhere else.
• Written preferences. Each of you writes down privately how much the item actually matters to you. Comparing those honestly reveals and solves a lot more than arguing.
• Neither keeps it. Sometimes the object is difficult to live with.  If a case has been filed, this is something to raise with your attorney rather than act on.

If you were not married and nothing has been filed, you can use any one of these approaches and be finished. If you were married, bring the results in as a proposal, and share them with your attorney and/ or mediator. Arriving at mediation with most items catalogue and agreed upon and twelve flagged as needing further discussion is a very different meeting from arriving with nothing, and the difference shows up in the bill.

One thing to account for: whoever stays and keeps a furnished home can replace things gradually. Whoever leaves the marital home tends to have to replace many things in very short order (which can be psychologically and financially expensive).  A division that looks even on paper can seem uneven for that reason alone.

Gifts, heirlooms, and sentimental items

People usually assume a gift stays with the person it was given to. Courts do not always see it that way, and the treatment of gifts between spouses, engagement rings, and wedding rings differs by state. If any of those are contested, ask a qualified legal professional in your state rather than assume.

Shared sentimental items can be more difficult to address. Photographs and video can be copied, so split the cost of digitizing and you both keep everything. For physical objects, some people decide to alternate, or use written preferences, or to trade making whole with other items.  

Pets

Most states treat pets as property. A growing number now direct courts to consider the animal's wellbeing too, and how much weight that carries depends on where you live.

The practical questions are: who has housing that allows pets, who has the schedule that allows them to care for the animal, who handles the vet, and who the animal is primarily bonded to. Some separated couples share a pet and it works. For others, the handoffs extend the breakup and healing process. If children are in the house, the pet is usually part of their stability more than either adult's.

Bringing your property inventory to an attorney or mediator

What professionals need from you is the record.

A useful handoff has four parts: a complete room-by-room list, photographs documenting that the item exists and in what condition, a note on how each item came into the household along with any proof, and a short list of what you actually care about and what you do not. The last part matters more than people expect. A mediator can find a workable trade quickly when both people have said what they want. When both are defending everything, it’s very difficult to find compromise and these conflicts get drawn out.

Personal property tends to be a high-friction part of a divorce. It is also the part you can prepare on your own. Handing over a completed inventory moves the professional time onto the questions that need professional judgment. That inventory handoff is what Divisly was built to produce.

When to get help

Some situations are not negotiations and should not be handled as one.

If your partner has been abusive or controlling, this deserves to be handled with extra care and support for you. Your safety outranks every object in the house. Do not go alone back into a shared home to collect belongings. Many police departments will send an officer to stand by during a property retrieval, and domestic violence advocates can help you plan it.  The National Domestic Violence Hotline is available at 1-800-799-7233, 24 hours a day.

Consult a legal professional if you suspect items are being hidden, damaged, or removed; if you are being told you have no right to things you own or brought into the relationship; if you are unsure what restrictions apply once a case is filed; or if the conversation has stopped moving after several good faith attempts.

Some of what gets decided about property division won’t feel great in six months, and that should be true on both sides. That is common.  But when you start creating and building your next home - without your ex - most of the things you cherish will not be the items you argued about during the divorce.  We promise.

TheAfterEve publishes general information, not legal or financial advice. Property rules differ substantially by state, and only an attorney licensed where you live can tell you how they apply to your situation.

The tool: Divisly is a guided property and belongings inventory for separating households. Available on iOS and Android.