Please note that I said later that I was not referring to things bought during the relationship. I am very much aware of both genders’ stupid purchasing tendencies - such as women spending family money on shoes, purses, designer crap - so it’s not just one side that’s responsible for that.
No, it’s very common for family courts to award half of the man’s pre-marriage assets to the woman. I can’t be more specific than that due to who I work for, but I’ve seen more than enough cases where the man didn’t blow family money on toys and his pre-marriage stuff was ordered sold or given to the woman.
Oh, they will always do that unless there’s pre-nup; and vice versa (sometimes the woman has more assets, after all).
But I really DO see this often. Guys tend to spend WAY more money on collecting big ticket items that do maintain value. Women tend to spend money on clothing the kids, making the house look nice, etc...most women are not collectors of expensive things.
Then a divorce occurs and the guy thinks he should get to “keep his stuff” while the wife gets the used furniture...even though the money for both came out of the collective earnings and the value of the latter goes to basically “zero” once used.
It’s always fun when I write an appraisal on an $80,000 gun collection, to find that the other side has some handwritten notes from a friend/dealer of the husband that values the same collection at $10,000. Yea...right...LOL! These are the guys bitching like little girls about the women getting “half his stuff.”