You and your spouse have taken time to collect many things during your marriage. You collect artwork and special, customized furniture. You have amazing pieces of jewelry and items that you've worked hard to purchase.

The problem you're running into now is that you can't decide on how to divide that property. While your basic items, like common furniture, vehicles and even your home were easy enough to split, you can't decide how to split these more unique pieces. 

Use this technique to divide your unique assets

Since you're having so much trouble, there is one technique that might help. Here's what you to do:

• Both of you should list out the marital assets that still need to be divided.
• Each of you selects the items you'd like specifically, without regard to the other person's list.
• Compare your lists. If there are any items that aren't matched, then you should keep those that you selected.
• Look at what remains to see if you are willing to “trade” one selected item for another. 
• Alternately, you can each choose from the remaining items one at a time, which forces you both to prioritize.

If anything is left, you may consider negotiating for the pieces, selling them or letting a judge decide how to split them. 

This technique won't work for everyone, but it's based on a “first choice” system where each person chooses one item before the other chooses one. This can be a good way to make sure you both get some of the items that you're interested in and those that are most important to you.

Your attorney can talk to you more about the options for dividing property. Our website has more on divorce and what to do if you reach an impasse. There may be several ways to get past your dispute and resolve your divorce concerns.