Professional Licensure

Academic diplomas and professional licenses may be considered marital assets. This is particularly true when one spouse helped put the other through school to become a professional. Most valuable are the licenses to practice high-income professions�medicine, dentistry, and law. A Ph.D. degree is also an asset to which the courts are likely to attach a value.

A divorce court may determine that professional status is a marital asset worth $1 million or more. To balance outcomes, the court may leave the spouse with professional status very little in other marital assets.

Other Assets to Consider

If you have prepared a thorough list of assets before you negotiated your agreement, you will be less likely to overlook some of these less visible assets:

• Inheritances due.
• Options to acquire property.
• Claims or lawsuits against third parties.