From Divine Love to Divorce Court...

How a Home Inventory can help during the transitional times of marriage...

In business relationships, it is widely understood to "design your divorce while you're still in love". In other words, if one partner decides to change their course during the business relationship, there needs to be a clear definition made before things go bad as to what will happen to the business. This is when cool heads can prevail and create a winning solution for all.

So why don't we do that in marriage? Marriage starts out with the best intentions for a life long union. But sometimes things change, people change and commitments change. The "D" word comes up. Divorce is a difficult enough time as it is, but now you have to separate your property. If you had a prenuptial agreement, you may already have an understanding how to divide property. If you do not, there will be a lot of questions in your mind. Will my spouse be fair? What will we fight over? The CD collection? The sofa? It's not going to be easy.

Having a home inventory is one way the couple can fairly divide their property without having to go through painful face-to-face negotiations. This can allow the couple to claim the property they want and negotiate the items they both want in a neutral setting and in their own time. It should include a complete listing of all personal property along with pictures for reference and some sort of cataloging system so you know which clock/chair/computer/etc. each is referring to.

So let's say you are engaged to be wed in the near future. You may have even considered a prenuptial agreement and a home inventory should be part of that agreement. What a home inventory can do for you is identify what each partner has come to the marriage with in the event that things don't work out. This way there would be no disputing the property brought into the marriage. The same can also be said for roommates moving in together.

It gets a little bit dicier with this perspective, but perhaps you expect your spouse to become problematic in your upcoming separation. Having a home inventory in place prior to any legal proceedings could prove a very valuable tool in the end. This would create a detailed digital record of the items to be split, proof that they exist and that they were in the home. Sometimes this kind of preemptive measure may be in your best interest.

Marriage can bring out the best in people, but unfortunately it can also bring out the worst. If you know someone who may be going through a marital change, please share this with them.

Kelly Rinke
President
ProActive Home Inventory
www.ProActiveHomeInventory.com
kelly@ProActiveHomeInventory.com
972.869.9000

Prove it...

Your insurance is only as good as your proof…

Most people think if they have homeowner’s insurance they are covered. To some extent this is true, however if you were to lose your home to a fire (or other named peril), the burden to prove your claim is on you. Of course the insurance adjuster can see the house was burned to the ground, but it’s what he can’t see that we are talking about. The insurance company would require a list of EVERY ITEM lost or damaged in order for them to pay what you would expect. This is an extensive and exhaustive itemization of every stick of furniture, item of clothing, all of your CDs, DVDs & books and the list goes on and on. Furthermore, you would probably still be working on that list a year or more after your home burned down. The insurance company may also want proof that you owned certain items through pictures and/or receipts. If you’re like most people, all of your pictures and receipts would have been destroyed with your home.

Relying on memory alone could be a very expensive mistake as most people will forget about 20% of what they owned. In order to make sure your insurance works for you as you would want, it is essential to have a home inventory secured away from your home. Even though we may have good intentions for getting this done, most people don’t ever get around to it. In my experience less than 10% have any kind of home inventory and many whom have do not have it secured in a safe place away from the home.

So I ask you, if you think insurance is important to maintain, why wouldn’t you want to make sure it will work for you when your time comes? Having an up-to-date home inventory is really the only way to assure you will be paid what you deserve. If the something happens to your home this service can save you tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of your precious life. It's time to get ProActive about documenting your property.

Kelly Rinke

ProActive Home Inventory

www.ProActiveHomeInventory.com

kelly@ProActiveHomeInventory.com

972.869.9000

Just imagine if this happened to you…

I want to tell you a story about Alexandra’s experience when her father’s home was destroyed by an F4 tornado in Kansas a few years ago. Luckily her father survived but the tornado demolished his home. Alex went to Kansas to help her father put the pieces of his life back together. She literally cleaned what was left of his home with a shovel. During the process, she recalls creating an exhaustive list for the insurance claim of his personal belongings from the tattered remnants of his life. What the insurance company wanted was a detailed listing of every item gone or destroyed, including when & where each item was purchased, how much it cost, they even wanted brand names. Mind you, there was hardly anything except memory from where to start. She had to take a month’s leave of absence from work to create this list for her father. You wonder how much that cost her financially. But family and home is where the heart is and most of us would do the same if we were in her shoes.

Most people won’t remember about 20% of their property. What would 20% look like to you? Here’s a little test you can take for yourself. Leave the room you are in now and write down everything that was in that room from your memory. Then go back and compare your list with your room. How much did you forget? Did you include the closet and drawer contents? I can tell you that people whom have experienced something like this spend months if not years remembering items they forgot to include.

How much is your time worth? How much is your peace of mind worth? How much is your property worth? Isn’t it time for you to get ProActive about your financial life?

A properly stored home inventory could have saved Alex and her father weeks of their lives, perhaps even months. It could also have saved him a lot of money as he surely did not remember everything he owned.

Get ProActive about your financial life. Have your home inventoried BEFORE something like this happens to you and your family.