As soon as you come to the conclusion that your marriage is ending in divorce, it may be your first instinct to take possession of all of the investments you have worked your whole life to accumulate. However, this type of irrational behavior can actually be detrimental to your ability to acquire a fair share of the investments you and your spouse have grown together. Immediately upon filing for divorce in New York, you may consider suspending any activity within your investments or putting them on a temporary hold, but that is all you should do until things are finalized.
Investments can be tricky because determinations must be made to decide who contributed more to which investments, whether or not certain names or provisions are tied to those investments and whether or not their outcome was discussed in any formal legal documents such as a prenuptial agreement. While you can petition to be the sole recipient of various investments, the decision of who gets what ultimately lies in the hands of the court.
According to U.S. News, something you should be aware of is that just because two investments may be an equal dollar amount, it does not necessarily mean they are worth the same. Many things affect an investment’s worth including whether it is a stock or a real estate property, what the initial base value of the investment was and what the price of taxes is that you are paying on that investment. If your spouse was less involved in the money management portion of your marriage, he or she may not understand the difference between certain types of assets. As such, be careful to make sure that everything is correctly documented in legal forms to avoid disappointment throughout your divorce.