Dividing debt accounts

[velobard]

My STBX and I are dividing some credit card and other accounts and have agreed to split it down the middle. I'm filing pro se. How should this be listed on the divorce paperwork? Should I just list "Account A" on each page (husband's and wife's debts) with half of the debt listed for each spouse? Or will the court look at it funny if it looks like the same debt is listed on each page?

[Trevor]

Create a spreadsheet and split so that the dollars are ~equivalent on both yours and her columns. The accounts in her name only should be on her side, and yours likewise assigned to you. Then try to stack the accounts so that you don't have to actually split (m)any of them.

[spritom]

Totally agree with Trev on that. Whether a spreadsheet or just a piece of paper with a stubby pencil, it's 5th grade math.

Another tip is to assign debts to you that you care about....and assign debts to her that you don't care about. That way if she doesn't pay them, the damage is minimized.

The spreadsheet idea can also include the bigger picture of assets of large items too, like this.



In my case, I was open for her to have things like the motorcycle, bowling ball, turbine-powered-leaf-blower at fair market price. But she avoided those pretty much as taking on big assets also meant she took on more debt.

[Trevor]

Thanks for the improvement, sprit. Much better than my example, and closer to the one I actually built; I was just making a debt split point.

[spritom]

I spent most of the time just trying to match your color scheme.