Does the same go for debts? Like one person has $200k student loan, payments were made with “marital income,” so the debt liability is 50/50?
So, it's really only 50/50 if you make the judge decide it. You don't have to do that.
In my situation, my ex had run up about 50k in credit card debt, which I then transferred to my credit cards because they kept getting canceled and the interest rates were insane and she was too stupid to pay them. She had a TSP (government 401k), but she kept taking fuckin loans out of it because she's retarded. So she had no retirement. She also had 100k in student loans (I already told you she's retarded). We had the house, with about 100k in equity, and we had basically zero savings.
I had 15 years in a union pension (which my lawyer said was potentially worth a million dollars - I think she was exaggerating slightly. It's worth about 110k in my IRA right now, but we'll see what the future holds), no debt of my own, it was all her debt on my cards.
The agreement we came to quickly was that we keep our own vehicles, and we keep our own retirements. She just wanted her share of the equity in the house, and we'd split the debt. I obviously couldn't afford to give her 50k without selling the house, so I offered her a cut of my pension, and she refused it. She was coming up on 40, no retirement, no savings, no house, and 100k in debt and she turned down a piece of my guaranteed money. I'm kinda glad she did - I wouldn't have been able to cash it out and actually make it do something for me. But that still seems like a completely retarded move.
We ended up agreeing on something like I'd pay her $500/mo until I could refinance the house - and since she owed me child support (made more than me, and I had more custody of the kids), we basically just traded the same $500 back and forth for a few years. I think the child support was like $587 or something, so the money just stayed in my venmo and I'd kick it right back over to her as repayment for the house equity. The only sticking point was the debt - she wanted her student loans to be considered marital debt, but I brought up that her earning power should be a marital asset, and she immediately agreed to keep it. So I'm guessing I was probably right and her lawyer knew it and told her to knock it the fuck off before she started paying me alimony. Then there was the shit sandwich I had to eat, which was I felt like I shouldn't have to pay off her debt just because it was on my credit cards, and my lawyer looked at me and said "Do you trust her to pay them?"
Well, fuck, fine. I'll fucking keep it then.
That was the entire agreement. The judge decided nothing. Well, I take that back - the judge decided that I owed back child support for the summer that I was out of the house, paying all the bills and buying groceries. Because for some fucking reason paying literally 100% of the household that I wasn't living in bills wasn't enough.
So yeah, don't fucking let the judge decide shit.