Disclaimer: This article does not constitute legal advice. If you have any questions about your individual situation it is best to seek the advice of an experienced legal professional.
In “high net worth divorces,” where a divorcing couple has significant assets, often these assets include foreign assets, such as international real estate, international bank accounts, international retirement accounts, international business interests and international trusts.
If you are getting a divorce that involves complex property division where there are foreign assets, divorce mediation is the best choice to help you work on your complex property division. Why is this? The following are a few reasons:
Divorce Courts Struggle to Enforce Court Orders Regarding Foreign Assets
If you are not in agreement with your spouse and you are relying on the US courts to enforce court orders regarding the division of foreign assets, you should know that this isn’t a safe bet. Dividing foreign assets, such as retirement accounts and foreign trusts, means you are subject to multiple sets of laws and rules about how this should be done. Just because you get a court order from a US divorce court that orders your foreign trust assets divided in a certain way, it doesn’t mean this will stand up to any challenge. The foreign courts will be following the law of the land and they could reject an overseas court’s interpretation of the law. This is a good reason why it’s better to mediate your divorce. A skilled divorce mediator will help you navigate the process of dividing offshore assets. Sometimes, instead of dividing the foreign asset, it may be easier to agree to offset an international asset with equivalent US assets. It is much easier to come to these decisions if you are involved in a non-adversarial process like divorce mediation.
Divorce Mediation Offers a Unified Appraisal Process That Simplifies Property Division
One of the perils of dividing international assets in a divorce is the issue of valuation. If you have committed to an adversarial divorce process involving separate attorneys, likely you will also have separate appraisers who may disagree on the value of foreign assets. In divorce mediation, you agree to work with a highly skilled appraiser or appraisers, who can arrive at an agreed on value for the assets. This makes it easier and cheaper for you to get an expert appraisal, since you won’t be hiring two or more appraisers who will offer dueling estimates. At Divorce Options San Diego we offer a unified appraisal by our in-house experts as part of the divorce mediation process. This is cheaper and more efficient than hiring an outside expert.
Divorce Mediation Avoids a Legal Fight And It Means You Can Get a Divorce From a Convenient Location
If your divorce involves complex, high value assets that are distributed internationally, the last thing you want to do is get caught up in a fight with your divorcing spouse about how to divide these assets. Fighting over offshore assets can drag out your divorce and force you to travel for legal proceedings. Divorce mediation helps you avoid the headache of contending over how to apply foreign and US Laws to your assets. If you have international assets it’s likely you may both be living in different countries. If you are fighting your divorce in court, one or both of you may have to travel to appear for court hearings. If you are mediating your California divorce, most of the process can be done remotely. You won’t have to show up for legal proceedings whenever there is a dispute over your international assets.
Divorce Mediation Looks at the Whole Financial Landscape and Optimizes the Community Property
When you choose to mediate your divorce, you are choosing to work as a team to divide your assets in the best possible way. Your divorce becomes more like a business deal than a process of “taking” assets from the other spouse. In a business deal, both parties should walk away satisfied that they have participated in a fair, efficient, respectful and legally compliant process in which their common assets have been maximized not depleted. Divorce mediation aims to offer the same level of transparency, convenience and respect.
Our Services And How We Can Help
Our West Coast Divorce Mediators have legal and financial expertise that we employ to assist our clients in dividing their complex assets in the most efficient, stress-free manner. We help divorcing couples with high value assets manage their divorce so that the process goes as smoothly as possible and both spouses are able to start their new life refreshed and thriving financially.
We mediate divorces that have an international component, whether it involves the division of offshore assets or international child custody mediation or both. We are certified financial planners who have a mathematical background, which we apply to our client’s complex assets to model future scenarios for growth and prosperity. Our divorce services are a “one stop shop,” where your divorce is managed efficiently, through financial planning, to estate planning, to legal filings and documentation. We even help our clients with career coaching and the logistics of moving house and decorating.
We can mediate your divorce in-person or remotely via secure private servers. Our divorce mediation sessions are completely confidential. We have offices in San Diego, CA, Silicon Valley, CA and Berkeley, CA. Please contact us to learn more about our divorce mediation services.
