How did you and your ex divide up all the mementos?

June 30, 2015 9:31 AM

I've been divorced since 2004 and we separated a few years before that. Pretty much all that remains is child support (not part of today's question) and about 8 boxes of mementos, including photos, in the corner of my apartment. I'd like to have a final division of this stuff this summer. So how did you and your ex divide up all the stuff?

We're very amicable. My ex and I spend a fair amount of time together in connection with our son's activities and events.

There are some one-of-a-kind mementos such as wedding cards from friends, and wedding photos.

There are some family photos in envelopes, some with duplicates in the envelopes, some with negatives. There are vacation photos and souvenirs.

Occasionally I dip into one of the boxes (there's no corresponding cache at her place), see an item that's obviously hers, and send it off to her. That's fine, but not a full solution.

I imagine a few scenarios. 1/ I could do all the work, decide what I want to keep, and send her the rest. That would be simplest, but excessive work for me, and unfair to her.

2/ Or I could divide the stuff, prepare a proposed division of everything, and she could come over and see and discuss what I had done. Again, more work for me, but less unfair to her.

3/ Or she could come over and we could work in parallel, each taking one box. We could each prepare a proposed division of our assigned box and discuss that box.

So, how did you and your ex divide up all the stuff?

posted by JimN2TAW to Human Relations (13 answers total)

Best answer: We sat down with the giant tub of mementos and each grabbed handfuls, sorting it into "mine", "yours", and "stuff to discuss", and then went through the "stuff to discuss" pile at the end. (This happened when she was moving out, though, not years after the fact.)
posted by okayokayigive at 9:36 AM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: My wife put everything we were splitting up on a large table and asked me to take what I wanted. Everything I choose, there was a reason why she wanted it, "part of a set" or "my aunt gave me that".

So I said to her, tell you what, I'll go out for an hour, and when I come back, anything that's left on the table, I'll assume I'm free to take. No quibbling, worked for us.
posted by PaulBGoode at 9:40 AM on June 30, 2015

Best answer: I'm wondering if you care more about these memories than she does. I hope that doesn't come across as callous, but if you care a lot about this stuff, it would be to your advantage.

I suggest asking her which idea sounds good to her. Best way to maximize her buy-in, which is more critical to a smooth process than our opinion is. Good luck!
posted by cacao at 9:42 AM on June 30, 2015 [4 favorites]

Best answer: It was mostly books for us; we sat in the living room and figured out which ones he brought into the marriage and which ones I did; those got split up accordingly (although somehow he wound up with one of mine, which annoyed me at the time). Anything acquired after the marriage we just kind of decided who wanted it more.

As for dishes and so forth, all of which we'd gotten as wedding gifts, we split sets in half; anything that couldn't be split in half got divided based on who had given it to us. So gift from his family or friends, he got and gifts from my family and friends, I got.

He was the one moving out, so for anything that didn't fit into one of those categories, we decided whether it was more his type of thing or mine (so I got all the Hello Kitty dolls, go me), and he took the stuff that was his and left the rest.
posted by holborne at 10:06 AM on June 30, 2015

Best answer: 3/ Or she could come over and we could work in parallel, each taking one box. We could each prepare a proposed division of our assigned box and discuss that box.

Another idea: you can each take different colored sticky notes and go through the stuff, putting your sticky on anything you want. This quickly assigns the stuff only one of you wants, and anything you both claim, you can have a conversation about.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 10:10 AM on June 30, 2015 [2 favorites]

Best answer: For wedding photos, if you have an album/some framed, neither of you may want them on display but they should be available for your kids to look at/own. I would say, split up and take the framed photos (or split duplicate copies) and box up the albums/invitation/whatever for your kids and either keep in one of your houses (depending on how custody will work) or put in storage for them for later. Same for pics of the two of you; maybe painful to you, but something your kids are likely to want at some point. Store them somewhere for that day.

If it's just hard for her to come over and go through all this with you, then maybe take pictures of the items in question and post to a Flickr album or something and see if she can use that to select what she wants? Anything you don't want/she doesn't take after 30 days you can Goodwill. It's kind of impersonal but maybe that is better.
posted by emjaybee at 10:20 AM on June 30, 2015

Best answer: What does she want to do? 10 years of it sitting in your house, she might have moved on from that particular subset of clutter (e.g. wedding photos) and not even want it anymore. Give her a call and work out what you two should do. Move on from there.

I have a couple of things of my ex-wife's that she might like to have if I sent them to her. Alternately, I've had them for nearly 15 years, so she probably doesn't care, or even remember.
posted by themanwho at 10:42 AM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Digitize everything? Or at least the things you both want.
posted by hz37 at 11:08 AM on June 30, 2015 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Several years after the fact I digitized everything and then sent him everything I thought he would/could vaguely be interested in. It took a pretty significant amount of time, but it was such a relief to be able to get rid of all the boxes/albums/folders that had been invading my space. He had forgotten about nearly everything and was grateful that I made the effort.
posted by AnneShirley at 12:59 PM on June 30, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Given the volume of stuff you have, I think the sticky note/colored dot method would work best. Lay everything out and start on opposite ends, tagging what you want, and anything you both want you can discuss.
posted by ApathyGirl at 1:06 PM on June 30, 2015

Best answer: My exwife and I did what okayokayigive did -- went through things one by one and if only one of us wanted it, that was easy, if we both did we talked about it. There wasn't too much contested stuff.

Things like photos were digitized if not already digital, so no real contention there.

But that was right after we decided to divorce, as she was moving out. The vast majority of the memento-style stuff I don't care about anymore, and if we had waited until now to do it I suspect 90%+ of the stuff would end up in the trash pile.
posted by thefoxgod at 1:53 PM on June 30, 2015

Best answer: Ask her whether she care about having this stuff. Scan and share the photos. Wedding cards from friends, scan if you care about them.
posted by theora55 at 4:26 PM on June 30, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks for all your helpful ideas.
posted by JimN2TAW at 8:05 PM on June 30, 2015