Am I screwing myself financially long-term if I go for a cheapie uncontested divorce?

• Am I screwing myself financially in the long run if I go for a cheapie quickie uncontested divorce? My husband and I have been separated since August of last year, and neither one of us have made any move toward starting divorce proceedings. I think I should get the ball rolling, but could use some advice. On the face of it, our divorce should be really easy. We don't have kids, we don't have property - our only assets are a storage unit of furniture and about 20K in savings. I have been thinking we could just split everything down the middle and go through one of those divorce mills, which looks like it would cost about $750-$1000. But the thing that makes me hesitate is that I worry that going for a 50/50 division of assets might wind up being short sighted in the long run. I made decisions during the marriage that were aimed at the benefit of our marriage but that wound up being bad for me personally. For example, when we married, I came in with a lot of student loan debt (about 25K), and he had credit card debt (about 7K). I was the financial manager in the marriage, and decided that since his credit card debt was at such a higher interest rate, it made sense for us to use the joint funds to aggressively pay it off. So now (to the best of my knowledge), he has no credit card debt in his name (I don't have any), yet I still have all the student loan debt, which was barely reduced during our marriage (we will have been married 4 years this year). Additionally, we were both in graduate school at the same time, and when I was graduating and looking for jobs, he had decided that he wanted to apply for postdocs outside of the state (we were living in NYC). Money was tight, and I knew we would have moving costs, so again, my student loan payments were either at the minimum payment or put on deferment while I socked away as much cash as possible to be able to afford the move. Additionally, since I knew it was likely that we would be moving just months after graduation, I was reluctant to get a job in my field of study just to quit so soon, so I took a job I was probably underqualified for and would feel comfortable leaving. What wound up happening is that my husband wound up applying for and accepting a postdoc in another country, making the decision unilaterally with little regard to my lack of interest in leaving the US. I went with him because I didn't want to give up on our marriage that easily, but I was horribly unhappy and the marriage blew apart under those circumstances. So now I am back in NYC, working another job that doesn't make a ton of money because I took the first one I was offered in order to get resettled. And this cost of living here is much higher single than married, so money is tight. Meanwhile, we have not yet separated our finances - I was unemployed for the first four months of our separation, but now that I'm working and somewhat resettled, my husband has asked me to start separating them out, which is what has got me thinking that I want to make sure to do them right. So I guess my questions are: -Should I try for a division of assets that reflects some compensation for the personal sacrifices I made during the marriage? -If I do that, will it wind up costing so much in lawyer fees that it wouldn't be worth it? -Does the fact that I wasn't working during half our separation negate any additional claim I might have? -If I do decide to ask for more of the assets, how do I bring it up to him without getting him horribly defensive? We haven't talked about this at all - horrible communication was part of the breakdown of the marriage - but I would like to end things as amicably as possible and still wind up looking out for my best interests for a change. Throwaway email: [email protected]

• Answer:

  If you both came into the marriage with the debts then they were your own debts not your spouse's. Then as you preferentially paid off his $7K debt rather than servicing both debts equally, I think at most you could claim is the the debt repayment should have been equal. Therefore, he owes you $3.5K. If I were your ex-spouse I would agree to this without needed a lawyer. If you told me I owed you more I'd fight tooth and nail. So my advice is be realistic, the best solution is the one that is fair to both parties.