Mediate This! 50. Division of a Premarital Home: Wanna Keep It? Know This…
We answer your questions on parenting plans, child visitation, child education, schools, parental rights, divorce, paternity and more…
So you’re getting a divorce. Do you know what will happen to your property? Don’t just wing it. If you are going through a breakup you need to know how division of one or more premarital homes works or you may have unexpected results. Matthew Brickman and Sydney Mitchell answer one of their most profound questions about divorce as they go over several key points:
- Assume nothing.
- Know who you are before you get married.
- Know who you’re getting married to.
- Know the laws and statutes in the state you live in.
- Don’t take advice from anyone who isn’t a legal professional in the state in which you’re getting married and living in.
As discussed in previous episodes Matthew Brickman and Sydney Mitchell have told their separate personal stories and experiences with divorce and conflict. Both unique and completely different. If you have a matter, disagreement, or dispute you need professional help with then visit iMediate.com – Email mbrickman@ichatmediation or Call (877) 822-1479
The Mediate This! divorce & paternity podcast is hosted by Matthew Brickman and Sydney Mitchell
Their advice will help you deal with:
• Divorce (contested/uncontested with/without children, property, assets, debts)
• Parental Rights
• Paternity Cases and Rights
• Parenting
• Child Custody (Timesharing)
• Alimony and Spousal Support
• Child Support and Arrears
• Document Assistance
• Visitation
• Prenuptial & Postnuptial Agreements
• Post-judgement Modifications
• Family Disputes
• Business & Contract Disputes
• Employment: Employer/Employee Disputes
• Real Estate: Landlord – Tenant Disputes
• In-person Mediation
• Online Virtual Mediation
If you have a matter, disagreement, or dispute you need professional help with then visit iMediate.com – Email mbrickman@ichatmediation or Call (877) 822-1479
Download Matthew’s book on iTunes for FREE:
You’re Not the Only One – The Agony of Divorce: The Joy of Peaceful Resolution
Matthew Brickman
President iMediate Inc.
Mediator 20836CFA
iMediateInc.com
Sydney Mitchell:
Hi. My name is Sydney Mitchell.
Matthew Brickman:
Hi, I’m Matthew Brickman, Florida Supreme court mediator. Welcome to the Mediate This! Podcast where we discuss everything mediation and conflict resolution.
Sydney Mitchell:
So today Matthew and I are gonna spend a little bit more time talking about dividing the marital home. Um, but in this episode, spa specifically expanding upon kind of our previous conversation, um, about, about dividing the home. But Matthew, this time, what happens if the husband or wife owned the home prior to getting married, and it is a marital asset, but they didn’t obtain the home after marriage, but, but it belonged to one of the parties prior to where does that process start? I, and there are a lot of different, uh, implications with this.
Matthew Brickman:
So, so Sydney, this is interesting because it all depends on, um, when they obtain the home. And then what the value was as of the date of getting married. Cause we’re member in, in, in our previous episodes, we talked about, you know, when we looked at marital, how do you define marital? Marital is what was something valued at the date that you got married and what is something valued at the date that you filed for your divorce? Right? And so that’s what we’re looking at for data, marriage, data filing. So it depends what this depends on. And I’m, I’m gonna go two different paths with you. Let’s say, for example, that the, that the husband had a home prior to the parties getting married. Okay. And then when he got married, he refinanced and put the wife on the home, all of a sudden, the entire home it’s marital.
Matthew Brickman:
He co-mingled it. Right? So let’s say for example, and, and, and I’m pulling from real life, examples of media that I’ve had where, um, and I had one recently where the wife had a condo in New Jersey. Okay. And she sold it and then took those funds and bought a home in Florida after the parties were married. Now they’re getting divorced. And she’s like, but I’ve used the money from my premarital asset to buy this home too bad. You co-mingled it think of it like this way back in the day. And we’re going way back, like 2000 plus years ago, when people used to do a contract, let’s say that you and I were gonna have, have an agreement, right? Well, I would have a grain or I, I would have a pouch filled with sand attached to my belt. This is just how things were contractually done.
Matthew Brickman:
Some sometimes you would give a flip flop. Sometimes you’d give a sandal. Everyone knew, oh, Matthew’s got one shoe. He may, oh, wait, SI’s got, why does Sidney have Matthews shoe? Well, because we, we, we made an exchange. We had an agreement. I would give up my sandal, right. But usually I had a grain of sand and a pouch and you carried around a grain of sand and you and I would then make an arrangement, have an agreement. I would pull out grains of sand. I would pinch it and put it into your pouch. And you’re gonna pull out grains of sand and put it into my pouch. That’s where the concept of commingling came from. I am never getting my grains of sand out of your pouch. Like, they’ve been commingled, you cannot trace which ones are mine and which ones were yours. Right.
Matthew Brickman:
They’ve been commingled. So with this wife that had a condo that she sold, it took that money and put it into this home that the husband and wife bought. She commingled the funds. The home is now all marital. Now let’s say for example, that the wife sold the condo, bought a home and then got married. Right. Never put the husband on it, like it’s her home, but she had an inheritance premarital. Right. And she used that inheritance to pay the mortgage and the taxes and the insurance and the away every single month is a marital. No, because she bought a pre-marriage and she’s using a premarital asset to pay for it. Even if the husband, his name has, even if the husband is living in the home. Yeah. Right. And she hasn’t look, she bought this home and the deed even says, you know, Julia, a single woman, like he’s not on the deed.
Matthew Brickman:
And he wasn’t on the mortgage cuz she got the mortgage prior to him. Right. So he’s nowhere on it. And she’s not using she’s working, but she is not using any money that she makes from her job during the merit to pay for the home. You can see where she has say a million dollar, uh, account that she got left as an inheritance. And you can see that out of that account every single month is the mortgage and the property tax, the insurance and the HOA. Guess what? It’s not marital. Even if they lived in it, not Marit right now. What if they do improvements to the home? Eh, there might be an argument. I love, I love the argument of what they call sweat equity. It’s like, I sweated, I put them, I, I did, I hand carved our deck. You know, I handed the deck and I, I built the fence and you know, so alright. Sometimes there’s an argument for, you know, sweat equity. Um, but usually in that scenario it’s like, look, we’re keeping things separate. Right? Okay. I’m gonna switch it up. What if, what if wife had a house pre-marriage they got married and now her paycheck is paying for the home.
Matthew Brickman:
Then they’re getting divorced. Here’s where it goes. Interesting. In one of our previous episodes, when we were talking about the marital home, remember we talked about a partition action, which gives the power, the court to sell the home, not in this scenario because it’s not the husbands, it’s the wife’s home. So being that it’s premarital, the husband can not ever be awarded the home and cannot take the home from the wife. But there is a monetary interest that he has in the home. He can’t take the home. He can’t force the sale of a home, but he is entire to a monetary piece of the home. But remember when we talk about those grains of sand, like how do you figure out like his monetary piece of the home? Because what was the value in like, there’s what we call active and passive appreciation, right? Like active is when you’re actively doing something and enhancing that we put in a kitchen or we did an improved match. Right? Like we, we, we did something right. The passive appreciation. We live in that right now where like I bought a home last year and it’s already up $30,000 for doing nothing just because that’s the market. Right.
Sydney Mitchell:
I would imagine more to be honest,
Matthew Brickman:
But, but, but, but you know what, didn’t do anything.
Sydney Mitchell:
Right.
Matthew Brickman:
Just the market. That’s just how it went up. I didn’t do anything to cause it, we didn’t take, I didn’t expend any marital funds or effort and making that price go up. Right. So how do we figure out the husband’s marital portion of the home? Glad you asked. So in Florida we actually have a calculation. I
Sydney Mitchell:
Was gonna ask in lieu of the child support calculator. I was wondering if there was a calculating for this.
Matthew Brickman:
Yeah. So let’s look at the calculator. I’m gonna show you so very cool. So, so I’m gonna walk you through this Sydney. I know that our listeners, aren’t gonna able to see this, but they’re gonna be able to hear it. I’m gonna explain it and, and whatnot. And if you’re in mediation with me, you will see it because we’re gonna turn the screen on and we’re gonna go it through it. So the first thing that we do is we go to the assets and liability section of an equitable distribution chart. We’ve talked, equitable distribution, a number of times of how we divide up an asset, a debt, right? So the first thing we have to do is we actually have to put real estate mortgage the home. So let’s say for example, that the current value right now is we sit here today. The current value of the home is $600,000.
Matthew Brickman:
Okay. Yeah. And let’s say that the first mortgage, there’s only a mortgage on it. We don’t have a HeLOCK or second mortgage. I think we only have a mortgage. We owe 300,000. I’m using round numbers cuz it’s just much easier. Okay. So $300,000. So if you look at that, if it’s worth six, yo three, how much equity is there? $300,000. So if it is a marital home, if it was bought during the marriage, like we have been talking it’s 50, 50, right? So if there’s $300,000 of equity, husband’s entitled to 150 life is entitled to 150, but SI this is a premarital piece of property. Right? So what we do is we come over here to more info. We need more of right.
Sydney Mitchell:
There’s never a simple answer to anything that we, we talk about.
Matthew Brickman:
Well, but not a simple answer, but there is an explanation.
Sydney Mitchell:
Sure. It
Matthew Brickman:
Can be explained. It may not be symbol, but it can be explained because look, this is not the first time it’s happened. That’s why there is a formula because many years ago this happened and the legislature said, okay, we need to figure it out. Let’s create a formula. Guess what everybody now there’s a, formula’s just like child support, right? Yeah,
Sydney Mitchell:
Yeah. Yeah.
Matthew Brickman:
So if we come down here, you’ll see real estate data entry screen, separate property. Ah, because the wife, it, it it’s her property. So we click on Florida, passive appreciation and separate property calculation. So let’s click on that. So we first put in here the, which party has the separate property, is it the husband or the wife? Let’s say it’s the hus or let’s say it’s the wife. Okay. Wife has separate property. Okay. So here’s what we need to know. And, and God for this formula, because I’m not doing this by hand, right?
Sydney Mitchell:
Oh no,
Matthew Brickman:
Because oh no. All Sydney, all I need to know is the first seven lines the calculator does everything
Sydney Mitchell:
Listeners here. There’s like numbers. One through seven. There
Matthew Brickman:
Is
Sydney Mitchell:
Through 15, 16, 18. And I’m sure I keep going. So there’s a lot of numbers here.
Matthew Brickman:
All right. So yes. So Sydney, you’ve got one through seven then in the calculation you have subsection a, B, C, D, and E under a, you have five entries under B. You have three entries under C you have three entries under D you have four entries. And then under E you have three more entries. So you have 18 total under the calculation. All I need to know is the first seven calculator will do everything else. Okay, great. So, so here’s what I need to know. Line item, number one, whose home is it? We already establishes the wife’s home. So fine. We just drop down here and say, it’s the wife. Okay. Then line item. Uh, the next line item is what was the value of the home on the data, marriage or acquisition? Whichever was later. So let’s say that the date of marriage. Okay.
Matthew Brickman:
We, we can go back in time. Now. You wanna see something that, well, actually I, I’m not gonna show, I’ll just tell you on Zillow. Zillow’s sort of cool in, in, in, in this scenario, because let’s say for example, if they were married a couple years ago, they have no, they’re like, I don’t know what it was valued. So what I can do is I can actually pull up the property, scroll down and go to the recent history. And I think I can go five or six years back month to month. And it’ll tell me exactly what value it was and what year on what month. Ah, that’s how I, I find out this. I didn’t know. You could do that. Yeah. Yeah. Zillow’s pretty cool on that. Hmm. So, so let’s just say that we have found out. So remember the home right now is valued at 600,000.
Matthew Brickman:
They owe three. Okay. But let’s say that when she got married and we could go back to Zillow or maybe she had had an appraisal done, um, then we know it was worth 500,000. Okay. So it’s gone up a hundred thousand dollars, right. So then is there any active appreciation during the marriage? And it says active appreciation is defined as the enhancement and value an appreciation of non marital assets resulting either from the efforts or either party during the marriage or from contributions to, or expenditures from marital funds. So like we said before, Hey, you know, we built a, an addition to the home active appreciation. Right. So we’ve got nothing there. Nope. Didn’t do any of that. Okay. The next one. Well, are there any additional encumbrances or mortgages during the marriage? Did they take out a second mortgage? Is there a lie on the home?
Matthew Brickman:
Nope. Nope. They didn’t do any of that. Okay. How much of the mortgage principle was paid from marital funds? SI. This one’s interesting because a lot of times what the parties like I’d, I’d went just the other day where they said, look, where, where the wife was. The one that had, was paying the mortgage and she’s like, look, in the past six months, I have spent $60,000 paying down our mortgage and I need credit for what I paid. Well, you don’t get credit for the interest. It’s the principle that was paid. Well, usually the principal is much lower. The interest is a big number. The principal’s low. Right. So here, so what we’ve gotta do here is we’ve gotta pull the mortgage statement and see the breakdown. What is the principle, the interest, the taxes like whatever’s built to what is just the principle
Sydney Mitchell:
And is that something in the financial affidavit that the parties bring in with them?
Matthew Brickman:
Usually it’s not in the financial affidavit, but it would be in what we call discovery. So in the list of document that they obtain to create the financial affidavit, it’s usually in there because what we ask for is mortgage statement,
Sydney Mitchell:
Right?
Matthew Brickman:
A mortgage statement would have that breakdown.
Sydney Mitchell:
I’m just thinking like, as like for a listener, if they’re approaching this process, how can they best prepare? I was wondering if it was part of
Matthew Brickman:
That mortgage statement and, and Sydney these days, you know, being that we’re doing virtual mediation look, most people will simply turn on screen sharing, log in their account. And we’re looking in real time, like I could log on right now and show you my mortgage statement and show you the breakdown. Like it’s really simple to obtain. So, but what, I’m not a
Sydney Mitchell:
Homeowner, excuse my ignorance.
Matthew Brickman:
What we need here is we need the mortgage principle paid from marital. So that is whatever the principle is paid from the data marriage to the data filing that’s marital funds. Right? So let’s say for example, that the wife has paid $50,000, but this is for marital funds. Okay. And so line item seven automatically generates, says value on latest marriage acquisition or first mortgage. So it’s 500,000. So then it goes to total passive appreciation. And from here all the way down to line 18, it does an automatic calculation based on the law. So long story short, let’s just scroll down to the bottom and see what the marital portion is. Okay.
Sydney Mitchell:
And this population would differ per state.
Matthew Brickman:
I don’t know because okay. Because, because, and, and, and here’s why Sidney with the program that I have, and I’m using family law software. Okay. When I purchase this, I purchase it for Florida. Right. So it’s built in with Florida’s laws, Florida’s calculations for Childs Florida’s stuff. So I don’t know what the other states have because I’ve got Florida. Okay. So remember $600,000. They owe three. So you would think they each get 150,000, but this was a premarital asset that was valued at five, when they got married and she used $50,000 of marital funds to pay down the mortgage. So what the calculation shows us at the bottom, um, is separate portion of property. So the total equity we already know is $300,000. Cuz if you owe six, I mean, if it’s worth six and you owe three, you have 300,000 minus the total marital portion, marital portion’s only 60 grand.
Matthew Brickman:
So the equals the separate equity, the separate equity is hers 240,000. So what does this mean? That means that for the $600,000 home that she’s sitting on today, that she bought premarital. She paid $50,000 in marital funds and owes 300. If she wants to simply give him his marital portion, he moves out and on his Merry way, she owes him $30,000. That’s his marital portion of that asset, not 150. Now, if she had co-mingled it, if she had co-mingled it, instead of 30, it could be 150, but if she kept it separate and simply used marital funds to pay it down, here’s your calculator.
Matthew Brickman:
And it’s important to have. And so we use this, this is used on any piece of marital property, whether it is a rental property that they’re living in or not, whether this is a marital home, whether this is a piece of land and I’ve had it where, you know, somebody had a piece land, they were paying it off during the marriage, but okay, what’s the land worth now will I want to be bought outta my portion of the land. It’s like, okay, you’re never getting the land, but you are entitled to a piece of the marital portion. And so this calculator saves a whole lot of time, whole lot of arguments, whole lot of, you know, problems simply going, look, we have a calculator to determine what is your marital and non marital portion of that home. And so with this, now that we know what that piece is, now we can put it back in equitable distribution.
Matthew Brickman:
Maybe she doesn’t take a second mortgage out on our home to give him 30. Maybe he gets 30,000 extra in an asset or 30,000 less of a liability. You know, we put it back into the equation to then say, okay, how do we create 50 50 between the parties? How do we create equality? Um, and, and we just start horse trading across the table, like, okay, you’re taking this right. I’m taking that. Okay. Then I’ll take more of this. Yeah. Um, and so that’s, that’s how we figure out the separate equity questions, you know, as, as you’re looking at this,
Sydney Mitchell:
I don’t, I don’t think so. I wish our listeners could see something like this. I, um, one question I had for you is, is, um, I was gonna ask it at the end of the podcast, but I guess I’ll, I’ll ask now in case it prompts any more good conversation. So for our listeners who have questions about their particular situation, um, maybe some potential calculations if they’re in this process. Um, obviously, you know, I mean, I guess my question is how can they go about getting some other questions answered, whether at a local level, I know that we have an opportunity to receive questions. However, I know, you know what I mean? So how is a listener hearing our pod? They still have questions. What do they do? Where can they go to understand what this like might look like for them?
Matthew Brickman:
So two places they can go, they can go to the statute. Like I said, because I can’t give ’em legal advice, you know? Um, I can get them through the mediation process. I can guide them through it. I can show, owe them the laws. We can run the calculations, look at the scenarios, um, or they do need to go get legal advice. They need to find out for their particular situation and their particular state. Cuz like I said, I mean, there can be the little nuances of, okay, do you have sweat equity? Did you do some improvements yourself? Did you expedite? You know, and, and does that have any value to it? Um, you know, was it co-mingled, you know, can you trace dollar for dollar that it was or was not? And so, you know, because sometimes, um, sometimes someone may come into mediation with, or without an return and say, look, it’s a marital piece of property. And as we start digging into it, we find out, no there’s a marital portion, but no, it’s not a marital piece of property. And sometimes it’s just the lingo
Sydney Mitchell:
And that’s a lot of it that, that even, I mean, me looking at these documents, I mean, I’m still learning every time we talk. So if this is something that’s from me or something that a person has done before, there’s yeah. There’s a lot of lingo and, and it’s just a lot to learn, so yeah. Good learning. But um, but yeah, I was just curious what you might advise.
Matthew Brickman:
Yeah. So I mean really need to get, I mean, especi, especially between a, a home in retirement accounts, those are usually people’s two biggest assets. I
Sydney Mitchell:
Was gonna say, this is certainly one of the larger pieces of, of,
Matthew Brickman:
And, and so you know what, even if you’ve got to pay for a consultation with an attorney to figure out maybe your course to go, it’s worth it, considering how big the asset is. Right. You know, I mean it’s re you know, it would worth, it’d be worth a few hundred dollars to sit down with an attorney, tell them and let them look at it. It’s worth it.
Sydney Mitchell:
Right. You know, and that’s, that’s kind of what I was, what I was wondering. So yeah.
Matthew Brickman:
I mean sometimes, sometimes people are, sometimes people will throw good money after bad money and sometimes they’ll make really poor decisions to save money and make a poor decision, you know? And it’s like, you just needed to do a little bit more digging. I, I had a, um, I’ll finish with this. I’ll finish with this Sydney. I had a mediation where the parties actually hired actually, lemme back up. I had a mediation with a wife, hired an attorney. The husband did not have an attorney. Things seemed a little unfair to the husband and the wife didn’t want the husband to feel this way, but he refused to get an attorney. So they decided that they’re gonna come to mediation without her attorney. Okay.
Matthew Brickman:
I get a phone call from our attorney who I’ve known for years. Love this attorney, amazing attorney going Matthew. I just found out that my client scheduled mediation with you without me. And I’m like, uh, I didn’t know. She was represented. I got the request on my website online, but I didn’t know she was represented. Okay. So she brought me up to speed on what was going on. And so I met with the parties and, and actually it was interesting because you know, you and I have talked for, oh my gosh, we’ve been doing this for many, many, many, many, many, many months. Actually. We’ve been over we’ve it’s been a long time. We’ve been doing this podcast. We’ve been over a year. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, definitely over year, if not longer. So, um, you know that, I mean, look, most mediations. I mean, and in, in the, in the years that I’ve been doing mediation, I think I probably count on two hands.
Matthew Brickman:
The number of mediations that I’ve had that were more than one time, right? Like usually you come to mediation, get it done. You’re done. This is not, this is, this is an event. It’s not a process. It’s an event. You go, you get it done. Okay. It’s an emotional process. It’s an emotional process. But, but mediation is an event. It’s not a process. But the, but when these people contacted me, they said, all right. So for our first mediation, I’m like, what do you mean your first mediation? And they said, oh, well, we, we just wanna meet with you for the first time and see how it goes. And then we’ll meet with you again. I’m like
Sydney Mitchell:
This isn’t counseling.
Matthew Brickman:
Yeah. I’m like, what do you mean you wanna do fine? But I’m like, fine. If that’s how you wanna do it. Fine. After meeting with them. Oh yeah, they are number one. They are not in an emotional place to execute any agreement and sign off on anything. Okay. Number two, they don’t have enough information to even create an agreement. So actually send them away with homework assignments. So they came to mediation, they brought some information, but were grossly deficient on the two biggest assets that they had. And you know what, it was
Sydney Mitchell:
Home
Matthew Brickman:
Retirement account in a home. Right. And so I sent them away with homework assignments. You know what their homework assignment was, call their accountant, call a mortgage broker and, um, and call a real estate agent. Like, I mean, their home was, is like 1.5 million. And she had over a million dollars in a 401k. You need to get, look, if you’re gonna try to do this yourself, if you can do it yourself and you know what you’re doing fine. If you don’t, you either need the help. And then look, even, even her attorney could not have answered the questions that she has because her attorney is not a mortgage broker and is, and, and does not manage and is not a portfolio manager. And she wasn’t sure what the best thing to do do do, do I pull out money from the home? Do I liquidate my 401k and then pay for the, and I’m like, look, you need to figure out the tax implications.
Matthew Brickman:
What is the best route? So you’re not just wasting money just to be done. And so sent them away with a homework assignment because I can’t give them legal advice, but they didn’t even need legal advice. They, they actually needed advice from other professionals and professional that under no situation, even if this was a collaborative divorce and you and I have talked about collaborative divorce, where you’re sitting there with two attorneys and a mediator and a therapist and accountant, these people still wouldn’t have had their answers because they needed additional, uh, professionals. They needed a mortgage broker and they needed their financial advisor. They needed both of those and then probably their accountant on top of it. So I sent ’em away with a homework assignment and said, you get these an, if you wanna deal with this on your own, you get the answers.
Matthew Brickman:
So, you know, the best route. I don’t, I, I can help you negotiate, but you have to have the answers in order to say, okay, here’s all the pieces, the puzzle, the numbers, the information, okay. Now let’s, now let’s get creative on how you want to divide it up. Once you figure out what you have and the best way to do it, because I don’t want, I don’t wanna be like, yeah. Okay. Yeah. Let’s just liquidate your 401k. You pay a 10% penalty and, and, and then pay tax. I mean, we were looking at, at dividing of, I mean, for, for her to liquidate her 401k, she was look, I mean, for a million dollars, you got 10% right off the top just for going in there. And then for her tax rate, we figured she was at 30% for her tax rate. That’s 40%.
Matthew Brickman:
You’re just gonna hand over to the federal government, what it is the stupidest thing, because she was like, well, I don’t know if I wanna deal with a, quadri a Quadro is like 800 bucks, but then with the house and, and I, and I don’t know how to get, I’m like, okay, fine. Call, call your call, call a mortgage broker, figure out the best way to deal with the house. Call your financial advisor, talk to the two of them, get the answers. Then we can come back to the table. You can negotiate a creative way to then do what you wanna do. Yeah. Even the attorney couldn’t have helped her. So I talked to, so, so the attorney called me a couple days after mediation. She’s like, okay. So I saw that I didn’t get an agreement to review what happened. So I told him, I’m like, look, I sent away with homework assignment.
Matthew Brickman:
And she’s like, wow. She goes, I didn’t know you do that. I’m like, I didn’t have the information to help him. I said, did you? I said, and I said to her, I said, did you, she goes, well, I couldn’t even get the information from the husband. He wouldn’t even cooperate. I said, oh no, I got the information from him. But here’s what I got. And she’s like, wow. And, and so it was, it was, it was really nice. She said, she said, she said that when she was contacted and told, Hey, we scheduled with Matthew. She said, he’s the only mediator. And I thought there was a huge, a huge, uh, stamp of approval. I, I was very appreciative, but she said, look of all the mediators out there, he’s the only one that I trust to do this and to do it right.
Matthew Brickman:
And to be neutral. And he knows what he is doing and he’s not gonna screw this thing up. And so she sent ’em to me without her. And I, I, I was, I was very appreciative. I’m like, wow, thank you. Um, but you know, and so, so, you know, being that there was, you know, we’re, we’re looking and, and, and with these people, there was a non-marital component, a marital component of both a million dollar retire and, you know, over a million dollar home. And we’ve got marital components and pre-marital components and oh, and post filing components cuz she filed. And so that she’s still contributing to a 401k. It’s like, okay. So, you know, and when I’m asking ’em well, what’s your home worth? I dunno like you, okay. You do realize that in my engagement letter that I sent out, it says, get your appraisal.
Matthew Brickman:
Like, why come to me without the information? It’s a waste of your money. So when you say, okay, well what should the listeners know if you’re gonna do this yourself, do your homework. And if you’re gonna get the attorney, do your homework, give the attorney the documents that they’re requesting. It’ll be much cheaper and faster. This, this is an event, not a process, unless you want it to be a process, it could be a process’s process. It could be an expensive process. Right. You know, it, it can definitely be an expensive process. Doesn’t have to be. But so anyway, enough of that story. So yeah. So Sydney, that is how we look at okay. A marital piece of property or, I mean, sorry, a non-marital piece of property that might have a marital component to it. Any other questions you think maybe or any other questions you have, you think the listeners may have?
Sydney Mitchell:
Um, not yet. I know that as we continue to, to talk, I know there’ll be more, um, thank you so much for your insight and your wisdom. I think that this is extremely, extremely valuable, especially like you said, the home being the one, one of two, you know, of the most important things to consider. Um, this is a really big portion of it. And I think a lot of, of parties, um, wives and husbands are, are, these are things for them to be thinking about if they wanna go about this, like you said efficiently. Yeah. Um, cheap or as less expensive as possible, but also peacefully.
Matthew Brickman:
Yeah. All right. Until next time,
Matthew Brickman:
Occasionally Sydney and I will be releasing Q & A bonus episodes where we will answer questions and give you a personal shout out.
Sydney Mitchell:
If you have a comment or question regarding anything that we discuss, email us at info@ichatmediation.com that’s info@ichatmediation.com and stay tuned to hear your shout out and have your question answered here on the show.
ABOUT
MATTHEW BRICKMAN
Matthew Brickman is a Florida Supreme Court certified family and appellate mediator who has worked in the 15th and 19th Judicial Circuit Courts since 2009 and 2006 respectively.
He was also a county civil and dependency mediator who mediated hundreds of small claims, civil and child-related cases. Matthew was a certified Guardian Ad Litem with the 15th Judicial Circuit. He recently completed the Harvard Law School Negotiation Master Class which is strictly limited to 50 participants and the Harvard Business School’s Negotiation Mastery program as one of the 434 high-level professionals in a student body from across the globe, all with multiple degrees and certifications from the most prestigious institutions.