A lot of time couples getting divorced in West Virginia wonder when they actually value the property that is going to be involved in the divorce. All property that’s considered to be marital is supposed to be split evenly for the most part with a few exceptions. At what point is it valued? Generally speaking, what happens is they are going to look at the date of separation for valuing property. The value of the property on that date is what is going to matter.
This means all bank accounts that are considered to be marital, that means all tangible personal property such as vehicles, clothing and more are all supposed to be valued on the date of separation. This can be a real issue though because let’s say that people have been separated for five years or 10 years or six months, it’s really going to have an impact on how things are going to be valued. If it takes a long period of time, there may be no possible way to recreate the value of the property on that date of separation, but the courts will go by the separation date. However, some other factors can still come into play such as marital waste.
Things like marital waste are subtracted from the total amount in the distribution. Now, oftentimes that is going to be a big point of contention. Sometimes what’s stated on the petition for divorce as the date of separation is going to be totally different than what’s stated in the answer. In this situation, the court is going to listen to both sides as to when the date of separation is. The court is going to take evidence on that. Ten at that point, the court is willing to make a decision as to what the value of the property is on the date that it considers to be the actual date of separation. The court might go with the petitioner on the date, the court might go with respondent or the court might make up its own determination as to what the date of separation is going to be.
