What am I forgetting?
Divorce settlements come apart over the things nobody wrote down. Not the house — everybody remembers the house. The pension with no balance to look up, the unvested shares, the beneficiary form that overrides the will. This page asks what is true of you and shows you the 43 items people most often miss.
The beneficiary form is the one on this page that most often costs real money. The beneficiary form outranks your will sets out what divorce does and does not change on its own — and why “my state revokes it automatically” is true about the small assets and false about the large one.
There is no account, no login, and no data leaves your browser — there is no code here that could send it. The tick boxes work through styling alone. Close the tab and there is nothing to delete, because nothing was kept. That is deliberate: the last thing someone in a contested divorce needs is another company holding a list of their assets.
In this subject 3
What is true of you?
In this subject 3
Pay that is not in the paycheck
Compensation has quietly stopped being just salary. The parts that are easiest to overlook are often the largest, because they do not show up on a bank statement and they may not have been discussed at home.
- Unvested stock options, RSUs or performance sharesFrequently the single biggest missed item. Unvested does not automatically mean excluded – how they are treated varies by state and by what the grant was for. Get the grant agreements and the vesting schedule, not a summary.
- Deferred compensation and non-qualified plansMoney already earned but paid in a later year. It will not appear on a current pay stub or in a 401(k) statement.
- An unpaid or unvested bonusEspecially where the work was done during the marriage but the payment lands after separation.
- A defined-benefit pensionThe forgotten sibling of the 401(k). It has no balance to look up, which is exactly why it gets missed. It can be worth more than the house.
- Employee stock purchase plan holdingsBought at a discount through payroll, often held for years, rarely mentioned.
- Accrued paid time off, sabbatical or severance rightsSometimes payable in cash on departure.
- Health savings account balancesA real account with a real balance that nobody thinks of as an asset.
The house, and what comes attached to it
Most people know the house is on the list. What gets missed is everything bolted to it – and the fact that whose name is on the deed and whose name is on the mortgage are two different questions with two different answers.
- Whose name is on the deed, and whose is on the loanYou can be off the deed and still liable on the mortgage. Removing a name from a loan generally requires refinancing or the lender agreeing to a release – a divorce decree alone does not bind a lender that is not a party to it.
- Escrow balances, prepaid taxes and insuranceMoney already paid that sits with the lender.
- Home equity lines that are open but undrawnAn undrawn line is a live borrowing facility in someone else name.
- Solar leases, alarm contracts, propane tanks and service agreementsLong contracts that follow the property and can complicate a sale.
- Capital improvement records and the cost basisDetermines the tax on an eventual sale. Reconstructing twenty years of receipts later is close to impossible.
- A cemetery plotBought as a couple, almost never discussed, and genuinely awkward later.
The business, and the parts of it that are not on the balance sheet
Business valuation is its own discipline. These are the items that get left out even when a valuation is done.
- Goodwill, and whether it is personal or enterpriseRoughly the difference between value that walks out of the door with the owner and value that stays with the business. States treat the two differently, and it is often the largest single number in dispute.
- Accounts receivable and work in progressWork already done and not yet billed is still value.
- Owner loans in either directionMoney the owner lent the business, or took from it, often informally.
- Intellectual property, trade marks and domain namesA domain registered fifteen years ago can be worth more than the equipment.
- Buy-sell agreements with partnersMay restrict transfer, and may set a valuation formula that binds you.
- Company-paid personal expensesCars, phones, travel and insurance running through the business change what the real household income has been.
Children, and the money attached to them
Beyond custody and support, there is a set of accounts and obligations that sit in a child name and get forgotten precisely because they feel settled.
- 529 plans and custodial accountsWho controls the account is a separate question from whose money it is.
- Who claims the child on the tax returnWorth real money annually and easily left unaddressed.
- Life insurance securing future supportIf support depends on someone staying alive and employed, an unsecured promise is worth what the estate turns out to be worth.
- College costs beyond the age support endsSupport obligations and college obligations are not the same thing, and the gap between them is where the arguments happen.
- Health insurance, and who carries itCoverage through a spouse employer ends at divorce.
- Passports, school records and consent to travelPractical, not financial, and the thing people discover at an airport.
Accounts, and the paper attached to them
The obvious accounts get listed. These are the ones that do not appear on a net worth summary.
- Beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insuranceThis one is not a footnote. A beneficiary designation on an ERISA plan is followed as written – the Supreme Court held in Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 532 U.S. 141 (2001) that a state law automatically revoking an ex-spouse designation was pre-empted. The form beats the will, and it beats the divorce. If you change nothing else after a divorce, change these.
- Tax-loss carryforwardsA carried-forward loss reduces future tax. It is an asset with no account number.
- Cryptocurrency, and the keys to itHard to value, easy to move, and an asset nobody else can recover for you.
- Safe deposit boxesContents are not listed anywhere. The bank knows the box exists, not what is in it.
- Money lent to relativesRarely papered, frequently substantial, and awkward to raise.
- Pending lawsuits, settlements or insurance claimsA claim that has not paid out yet is still an asset.
- Debt in one name that both of you relied onWhose name is on it decides who the creditor chases, whatever the decree says between the two of you.
Time-based rights that nobody tells you about
A few entitlements turn on the length of the marriage rather than on anything either of you decides. They are easy to miss because they do not belong to either spouse to give away.
- Social Security on an ex-spouse recordTurns on the length of the marriage among other conditions, and is claimed through the Social Security Administration rather than negotiated in a divorce. Check the rules against SSA directly rather than against advice from anyone with a stake in the settlement.
- A QDRO, and whether anyone is actually drafting itDividing a retirement plan usually needs a separate court order that the plan administrator accepts. The Department of Labor states that plan administrators are neither permitted nor required to draft it for you. Decrees get signed and QDROs get forgotten, sometimes for years.
- Military or federal benefitsHave their own rules and their own duration thresholds.
- Health insurance between divorce and MedicareThe gap years are the expensive ones.
- Estate documents, powers of attorney and healthcare proxiesAn ex-spouse may still be named as the person who decides.
The things that are not really about money
These take up a disproportionate share of the argument, and they are cheaper to settle early than late.
- PetsSeveral states now direct courts to consider the animal wellbeing rather than treating it as ordinary property. Check what your state does before assuming either answer.
- Airline miles, hotel points and credit card rewardsProgram rules, not just the divorce, decide whether these can be transferred at all.
- Season tickets and club membershipsOften have waiting lists measured in decades, which is what makes them contentious.
- Collections, instruments, tools and inherited furnitureSentimental value and market value are different numbers, and conflating them is where negotiations stall.
- Digital accounts, photo libraries and stored payment methodsTwenty years of family photographs usually live in one person account.
- Subscriptions on a shared cardSmall, endless, and a running source of friction afterwards.
Tick a box above and the relevant list appears. Tick several. Most people find something in at least two.
Beneficiary designations. On retirement accounts and life insurance, the form on file is followed as written. In Egelhoff v. Egelhoff, 532 U.S. 141 (2001), the Supreme Court held that a state statute automatically revoking an ex-spouse designation was pre-empted for plans governed by federal law. The form beats the will, and it beats the divorce decree. It costs nothing and takes ten minutes. More on this.
How to use this
Print it, or write the list out. The value is not in reading it once — it is in having the list in front of you when someone asks whether you have disclosed everything, and again a year later when you are checking what was actually done. Items get missed because nobody asked, not because anyone hid them.
Compiled from the research behind the property, retirement and post-judgment pages on this site. Where a legal point appears here it is stated with its source; where a rule varies by state we say so rather than guess. Tell us what we have missed.
The most expensive mistakes in a divorce are made in the year after it — a retirement account that still names an ex-spouse, an order that divided a pension but never reached the plan, an insurance window that closed while somebody was recovering.
The checklist for after the decree → — what has a real deadline, what only looks like it does, and the three things courts have held that a decree does not do by itself.
Keep reading
- Who gets what — how property is actually divided
- Hidden assets — when you think something is being moved
- Can I afford to get divorced? — the cost of two homes
- QDROs — dividing retirement without losing it to tax
- Valuing a business
- Beneficiary designations
Why a plan legally cannot pay you without a QDRO, why an IRA does not need one, and the single sentence in § 72(t)(3)(A) that removes the 10% penalty exception for IRAs but leaves it in place for 401(k)s — dividing retirement accounts in a divorce.
If your name is on a joint account, the lender can still pursue you whatever the decree says — and a hold-harmless clause can be discharged in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, because § 1328(a)(2) carries § 523(a)(5) across and leaves § 523(a)(15) behind. Debt in a divorce.
For every other reason a person loses coverage, the employer has to notify the plan. For divorce, 29 U.S.C. § 1166(a)(3) puts that duty on you, within 60 days — and the election period cannot begin until it is done. Health insurance after a divorce, including why divorce gets 36 months of COBRA rather than 18.
People reconcile far more often than the paperwork assumes, and the paperwork does not pause while you decide. What a reconciliation does to a pending case, to the waiting period, to an automatic order and to an agreement you have already signed is set out in reconciliation: what getting back together does to a divorce.