I just got out of my second mediation/negotiation for asset division yesterday.

I think, like a lot of folks, as we were building our assets together we earmarked money for particular things. Taxes, houses, new vehicles, even Christmas purchases. Then, as a matter of budgeting, we consider those monies as set asides dedicated for that purpose.

I was reminded yesterday that, to the eyes of the law, you need to divest yourselves of those actually pretty artificial segregations. At the end of the day a dollar is a dollar. Which account that dollar comes from does not tag that dollar with meaning. If you "set aside" $1k for next Christmas, if in the process of dividing total assets that amount becomes $500, it does not mean that you will only have $500 for Xmas. It means that the money could and should be made up for with other $ from other set asides, if necessary.

I tended to get hung up on "but this money was allocated to this idea, and it was my idea, therefore it is my money and should be excluded from division!" She had the same ideas. The law does not respect those divisions, for the most part. There are some tax-protected accounts, of course. There are also some consequential issues that affect some allocations. But not most.

Yesterday would have gone better and quicker if we both were simply looking at the final number at the end of the balance sheet rather than which money came from where, and which money had been set aside into an earmark account. We got down to piddling over the last .5% of our estate and it was when I was reminded that, it doesn't matter where that money came from or where it was intended to go, but it's a rounding error in the terms of the estate division, that I was able to see past the smaller issues.