When it comes to negotiating a divorce, many couples give relatively little attention to retirement and investment accounts—seeing them as pots of money that can be simply split in two.
That’s often a mistake.
Accounts and their contents require careful examination before a “fair” division can be determined. Various types of retirement accounts have their own rules on tax treatment and access to the money. Two investments, meanwhile, can appear to have identical value but turn out to have wildly different tax liabilities.