What does it mean when you “get half of the marital estate”?

In Oregon, when you have property that needs to be divided during a divorce, you commonly hear you get half of everything that is the marital estate. While that's true that you do get half people, there's a common misconception that means that you get half of each individual piece. And what the court actually does is the court will look at the entire marital estate, the entire pie if you will, and they will help to trade assets back and forth so that, for example, if one of the parties is going to get the house and wants to keep the house, then half of that value will be given to the other party out of a different asset. Trying to keep things as whole as possible so that it's a fair division and also cost the parties as little as possible so that you don't have to pay for all of these divisions. The important part is to have an experienced family law attorney who will walk you through that process and help you to understand what it means to have a fair division of assets.