How long does a high asset divorce take?

However, divorces rarely go that quickly. For one thing, your divorce is not uncontested unless you and your spouse reach an agreement on certain key issues:

• Child custody
• Child support
• Spousal maintenance
• Division of marital property
• Division of marital debts

If you can reach an agreement, you draft an agreement, sign it, and submit it to the judge for approval.

However, in our experience, a high asset divorce takes much longer—even if the couple wants to reach an agreement on all the above issues. There are several reasons for this:

• Because you have large assets, it takes more time to identify them and determine which are marital property and which are separate property.
• Many assets, like real estate or business interests, take time to properly value. A real estate investor divorce can be delayed for this reason.
• A spouse needs time to analyze the tax implications of what property they receive.
• When a couple has significant assets, they rarely agree from the outset about how to divide them. Instead, they often must negotiate with each other, trading this for that, which could take months.

As you can see, even when divorcing spouses have the best intentions, it could take six months or more of prep work before they can come up with a property division agreement and submit paperwork to the court.

And if you can’t reach an agreement on all the above issues? Then a divorce could take well over a year. Child custody disputes, for example, are very lengthy, as each side tries to gather evidence to support its side.