Ask Slashdot: Dividing Digital Assets In Divorce? 458
An anonymous reader writes "I am a long time Slashdotter and currently find myself in the beginning of a divorce process. How have you dealt with dispersing of shared data, accounts and things online in such a situation? Domains, hosting, email, sensitive data backups and social media are just a few examples."
Blegh (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm only saying this so that others may learn from your mistake.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Generally true, but things like data backups - that's a little trickier to keep separate. Otherwise the examples given are things that should remain separate (email accounts! Duh!!)
I'm confused about the backups. (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't you simply make copies?
Re:I'm confused about the backups. (Score:5, Funny)
Apparently, you've never seen a spy movie. Of course you can't! There's just the one disk and that's it!
Re:I'm confused about the backups. (Score:5, Funny)
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No, unless the previous night I was REALLY drunk.
"We're on a mining ship, three million years into deep space... can someone explain to me where the smeg I got this traffic cone?"
"Hey! It's not a good night unless you get a traffic cone! It's the police woman's helmet and the suspenders I don't understand!"
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uhm... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg [youtube.com] ?
Re:I'm confused about the backups. (Score:5, Funny)
No.
Destroy everything leave nothing to your spouse. Divorces are never pretty.
Pyrrhic victory for the win!
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Pyrrhic victory for the win!
Pyric victory for the win! [alphachemicals.com]
Re:I'm confused about the backups. (Score:5, Insightful)
They're never pretty and are frequently ugly, but really don't have to be all that bad.
I'm divorced (and now happily re-married!) and while painful, the divorce wasn't ugly. We hired a lawyer together to help us through the paperwork. If you're cheap, there are also forms at Staples. The lawyer was well worth it. I kept most of the furniture and cut my ex a check in return. I had stuff, she had some cash, we were both ok and clear of any alimony claims. I probably could have fought and paid a little less to my ex and a whole lot more to lawyers.
Remember that at the very least you once loved that other person. Treat eachother with some respect, and part civilly. It's strange when you're called, "a model divorcing couple" but a million times better than going to war.
Re:I'm confused about the backups. (Score:5, Insightful)
and
Some days I read Slashdot and think "Wow.. sometimes it *is* good to be a geek".. (translated: many of us here have a bit of introspection). It's good to read this. My own divorce (a dissolution actually) was finalized late last year. We were husband and wife techies, and split everything right down the middle. She didn't want the house (being an engineer she wanted mobility for her career), so she received more cash than she normally would have. Are things weird in the aftermath? Yes. Are there hurt feelings? Yes. Do we hate each other? No. That being said, I'm glad we did it.
Had we gone to war we would have burnt through 15k a piece in legal fees, MINIMUM. Our combined total using one attorney was 2500 bucks. With kids it probably would have gone up by a factor of 2-5x.
Two things of note to the young'ns out there: I once read that in reality you should be at least 27 years old before marrying (there's some sort of psychological and brain development still occurring up to that point), and if you marry and start to have problems, do NOT do what a few of my moronic (okay, misguided) friends have done and said "Oh, this sucks.. but.. let's have kids and try to make it better." That's right, I've seen it more than once: people think that having kids will be a FIX for a marriage that's not working... and it's not.
Re:Blegh (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
Implying that it could/might happen is dangerous, my friend.
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Otherwise if OP is the one making the backups, then OP should be the one to keep them. Most likely it won't even be brought up in the papers, other than who gets the physical item.
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Make copies. Just because it took you two years to realize you hate your spouse, doesn't mean you can't keep mementos of your shared experiences. How hard is it to burn a few DVD-Rs ?
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Funny)
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it's much less satisfying than burning paper copies
Not if you burn the DVDs using thermite...
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I wonder if part of the problem here is that one spouse doesn't want the other spouse to have copies of some of the photos.
I have to say, though, how is it that people manage to marry someone that they hate that much? I really can't fathom it. I'm married myself, and we've gone through some rough patches (though we're past that and are quite happy now). I've also had girlfriends in the past, who obviously I had to break up with somehow to get to this point with a different woman. But even at the lowest
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
(I'm happily married to my first wife, so I have only the experience of others to draw on.)
Word to the wise, don't let her hear you calling her your first wife!
Re:Blegh (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you have a preexisting contract to the contrary, the legal rights to a work (copyright) are divided equally among all of the work's creators.
However, most of your data was not created mutually. Most photos, for example, were taken by one person or the other. In that case, they are actually mere contributions to a collection. Thus, ownership belongs to the person who shot the photo. This is straightforward most of the time, because the other person is usually in the picture. And arguably, if you are both in the picture, unless you used a tripod, someone else probably owns the copyright, though any claim is usually pretty unlikely.
That said, you can, as a condition of the divorce, contractually transfer all rights into a shared pool such that you both hold 50% rights in every photo. This is probably the easiest solution, assuming either of you cares enough to bother arguing about such a minor point.
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Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
Both of them... unless one of them is a vindictive twat who doesn't want to share something that costs them nothing.
It's a divorce. By definition someone is going to be a vindictive twat. Every divorce I've seen has been a race to see which party can be the bigger baby.
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Easy.
Name Smith gets Smith Family.
Kids keep kid@Smithfamily.com
Their last name is Smith.
Mr Smith keeps Mr@smithfamily.com
His last name is Smith.
Wife takes back her maiden name and gets her own domain.
Her name is no longer Smith.
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My computers have user accounts for convenience: I use my computer differently from my SO and guests. These same computers automatically back up home directories to separate spots on the backup drive, because they're different folders. This is just basic home computer/network stuff, no ulterior "planning for never seeing these people ever again" crap.
Did you have a spouse who honestly thought that you were planning for a divorce by keeping separate backups? I use the past tense because it's very obvious tha
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This is what I don't understand. I've got a similar setup to yours, we each have our own profile dir on the server. We don't care so much about privacy, I am root anyway, if I wanted to read her files, I could, but if we were to split, it is a simple matter to copy her files to a separate hard drive, or burn to a DVD-R, and delete them from my server and its replicates.
If the concern is about copyrighted materials like movies/music/software, it becomes a matter of ethics I guess. If you want to strictly
Re:Blegh (Score:4, Funny)
This discussion is tiring. I'd like a pre-nap right now.
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Otherwise, everyone would have a pre-nap (which is a kind of divorce insurance).
I think that's "pre-nup" (pre-nuptial). I looked up pre-nap on Urban Dictionary and it had an *entirely* different meaning...
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"pre-nap isn't defined yet [urbandictionary.com]". In fairness, that is entirely different from a prenuptial agreement.
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to question that statistic, however. Isn't 50% for ALL marriages? That doesn't apply to everyone. If you're in your first marriage, you don't care how many total marriages end in divorce, you only care how many first marriages end in divorce. I do remember reading that the failure rate for marriages goes up with the marriage number; i.e., the number of failures for 2nd marriages is much higher than first marriages, the number for 3rd marriages is higher still, and 4th marriages, well you might as well not bother if you couldn't make it work with the first three. If you're in your first marriage, you don't care that some losers on their 4th and 5th marriages are almost certain to get another divorce, because that's a different group of people from you. First marriages are the most likely to succeed (not that that number is all that high, but it's still better than the failure rate for all marriages).
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
If your partner is so self-deluded that they can't imagine they'd be in one of the 50% of marriages that end in divorce, you chose poorly. Mature people understand that things change, people change, and they can grow apart through no fault of anyone. Do you really want to base the most important relationship of your adult life on denial?
There so much sad and self-defeating about that statement that I don't know where to start. When I got married, I made a commitment, a promise, to always love her. Even if I feel tired of her. Even if she's changed. That's not denial, that's mature people realizing that there's a whole lot more joy in working through hard times and ending up with a stronger relationship as a result, than being one the 50% of people who just give up and throw in the towel when it gets hard. I'm not preparing for divorce because I've made a promise that I won't. I intend to keep that promise, even if one of us changes. THAT is what mature people do.
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
There's nothing sad and self-defeating about being realistic. Saying "it could never happen to me", now THAT's sad and self defeating.
Re:Blegh (Score:4)
Some things in life are worth fighting for and worth working hard for. My marriage is one of those things. Apparently, gauauu thinks his is, too. YMMV, but IMHO, the odds of making it are inversely related to how much you expect it to fall apart, so why would you possibly approach marriage expecting it to fail?!?!
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The reason why people get divorced is because they are selfish. If you can't overcome your selfishness, then don't get married in the first place.
It is sad that people don't believe in marriage anymore, or take it seriously. For most people these days, it seems that a marriage just means "till its inconvenient for my precious self".
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It is sad that people don't believe in marriage anymore
I disagree. I believe it's sad people don't believe in commitment anymore. I don't believe in marriage, but that's only because I don't need a piece of paper to prove I'm committed to the person I've been with for half my life (and if it's not for the rest of my life, it won't be for my lack of trying).
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You are right that people change. Otoh, a lot of divorces and breakups happen with people who never should have been together in the first place. I have noticed that many of the people whom I knew and broke up, did so because they didn't agree on having kids or not. Or pursuing a career or not, etc. Going into marriage without having discussed and agreed upon these things beforehand is idiocy.
You mention mature people, but mature people also discuss the big things beforehand, and they also realize that marr
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Indeed. If you know your partner could walk at any time, that's motivation to behave well. Far too many people get married, and then stop working on the things that made them attractive to their spouse in the first place.
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Funny)
Simple solution here is to have separate backup files of separate data. How hard is it to set the routine to make a backup of "robs documents" and another of "debs documents"?
If my wife knew about Deb that would make the divorce inevitable and immediate.
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"Generally true, but things like data backups - that's a little trickier to keep separate."
How? Her backups go to //nas1//backup/wife_laptop my backups go to //nas1//backup/My_laptop
Pretty darn easy to keep them separated. Also It's easy to deal with the photos cache, just make a copy onto a portable drive and be done with it all.
Re:Blegh (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
Like everything lse in life, "it depends" (Score:5, Informative)
It depends on whether there was a marriage contract or not, and also when the assets (for example, the domain names) were acquired, as well as their purpose.
Domains that were acquired as a hobby and have no pecuniary value go with the person who is listed on the whois, unless that person was listed just for conveniences' sake - then they should go to the real owner.
Domains that have a financial value that were acquired before the marriage generally stay with the person who brought them into the marriage, same as other assets generally (YMMV, of course, depending on local laws, etc).
Domains that are worth $$$ that were acquired during the marriage in the course of business stay with the business. So, it's all about how each party is compensated for their contribution to the business. Does one party buy the other out, or just get a share of the business itself if it's a multi-million-buck operation (not likely)?
WARNING: Many places have special laws concerning copyrights staying with the original author even if the material was created during a marriage (it does not become part of the "partnership" assets)! The question rarely came up in previous decades, so most divorce lawyers are totally clueless about this.
Re:Like everything lse in life, "it depends" (Score:4, Informative)
WARNING: Many places have special laws concerning copyrights staying with the original author even if the material was created during a marriage (it does not become part of the "partnership" assets)! The question rarely came up in previous decades, so most divorce lawyers are totally clueless about this.
In the UK its really complex. Generally individually held copyrights belong to the individual (though you may have to pay a proportion of the proceeds), but if held by a business they are split-able - even if the business is a sole proprietor. So if you run a computer business the work you did for that then the copyright could be split but if you developed something as a hobby you can't lose it.
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This.
I can think of only two digital "assets" that are shared with my partner. One is her domain name and web site, which could be trivially moved to her own registrar account and cheap/free hosting. The other is our media server. If we ever split up, I'll just set her up with a hard drive or modest NAS box and copy any movies and TV shows she wants to keep. Depending on where you live, this may or may not be in breach of copyright law.
Other than that, and for non-digital assets as well, we are two indi
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More complicated is the johnandmelinda@ type email addresses and other stupidity that less-techie types do without realizing how annoying this is to everyone else.
After 1-2 rounds of emailing "John" with a "Hey John, want to do $something on $differentdate instead of $originaldate" and getting back a "Sorry hun, John isn't home, this is Melinda" and never getting a reply from John at all, you simply cease interacting with either of them because together they're too stupid to be worth it.
However, it's not a
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One of the reasons for marriage, one of the pragmatic ones anyway, is being able to buy things and share them. This creates cost efficiencies. I mean even the RIAA and MPAA isn't going to sue for sharing with your wife.
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean even the RIAA and MPAA isn't going to sue for sharing with your wife.
Yet.
Re:being able to buy things and share them (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, this is flawed in a lot of ways.
In a sense there is no economic advantage between just living together as lovers and being married. One funny example used to be that the standard deductions of one Head of Household and one Single, both triggering on lower overall brackets was cheaper than the married rate on combined income, and other tricks.
Then there's the very real cost of the alimony/child care process. Guy starts out with house, guy should end up with house. But watch the number of times she gets it.
Or the kids. Woman starts out poor, woman has a kid, woman divorces two years later, woman keeps kid, woman gets payments GREATER than they would have spent together on the kid being frugal.
Plus the copyright angle of making "full backups" of database based assets is hysterical.
Re:being able to buy things and share them (Score:4, Insightful)
Guy starts out with house, guy should end up with house. But watch the number of times she gets it.
Even if she gives up a career to raise the guy's children? If there is a specialization of roles in a contractual relationship, then one side may have an advantage if the contract is severed. This is why people sue for breach of contract. Well, marriage is also a contract.
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Re:being able to buy things and share them (Score:4, Insightful)
depends on the situation. they're his if it benefits her in some way. if it benefits her for them to not be his, then they're not.
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I missed "with" on the first read through.
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Individuality is highly overrated, snowflake.
http://www.despair.com/individuality.html [despair.com]
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo. The secret to long relationships is not being mingling everything.
I've been with the same woman since 1985. All we share is an Ebay account in my name, and if we part it will be immediately terminated.
I would keep personal copies of ALL data, then go "scorched earth" on everything else. Dump the domains and hosting, splatter formal divorce notices all over all social media in they way they are posted in newspapers (no emotion, just legal facts), and shut down/delete any joint activity. Close all joint accounts, change passwords where appropriate, and in general do "best practices" for employee termination.
If there are large assets in play, see a lawyer.
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" and in general do "best practices" for employee termination."
Wait, have her escorted from the building? Freaking genius man!
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What's it telling you? What's more important: that they're together, or that they're married? I'm not sure how much marriage, as an institution, offers.
1. I'd love my wife of 27 years the same whether I was married or not. Tie.
2. If I'm injured and I end up in the hospital, my wife can come into the room where others might not. She can also make decisions regarding my care. +1 for marriage.
3. She can't do anything in my place as far as bills, the phone company, the DMV, or any other asinine agency that
Re:Blegh (Score:4, Interesting)
I've seen too many "mingled" examples turn into disasters.
In the Air Force, I had to counsel folks from airmen to NCOs who "thought" they had a life mate until they went TDY and came back to an empty house, no money, and their love match getting pounded (by someone else) like a cheap steak. Pulling First Sergeant duty (I was an assistant, and glad it wasn't full time!) is very educational.
My way has a parachute. I may never need to pull the ejection handle, but it's there. The other way is terrific until it isn't, and then it's much more messy.
Good luck, but I could never ethically advise anyone to try it that way.
Re:Blegh (Score:5, Funny)
I'm only saying this so that others may learn from your mistake.
So says Forever Alone guy! Yes, it's a mistake to trust anybody. By trust nobody you can ensure your heart remains perfectly safe and you, perfectly alone. This guy decided to take a risk, and yes, maybe in this one case it didn't work out for him, but at least he tries to have someone in his life who's last name isn't JPEG.
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I'm only saying this so that others may learn from your mistake.
So says Forever Alone guy! Yes, it's a mistake to trust anybody. By trust nobody you can ensure your heart remains perfectly safe and you, perfectly alone. This guy decided to take a risk, and yes, maybe in this one case it didn't work out for him, but at least he tries to have someone in his life who's last name isn't JPEG.
This has nothing to do trust. I trust my parents with my life, I don't share my accounts with them. Not because I think they would do anything wrong with them, merely because it's not theirs. You can love someone, trust someone, and be with someone without giving up your individuality in favor of being a single entity called a "couple". Any partner who doesn't understand that I need to have a life separate from hers is not someone I want to share my life with...precisely because she wouldn't be asking m
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Or maybe they got tired of adult men who can't even be bothered to change the roll of toilet paper - women do most of the hou [usatoday.com]
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destroyed your individuality by combining all of these things
wtf does that even mean? in Australia at least, if you live with a woman for 6 months, she owns half your assets by default (unless you got a good lawyer or have a pre-nup).
In any case, its wrong to get married with the condition that you get to keep all your stuff if you divorce. Pre-nups are stupid; it's like saying "I love you dear, but I expect we'll get divorced someday".
If you get screwed in love and you lose out, the lessons are that love can sometimes hurt and that women are expensive. Duh!
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And I think the idea that a woman gets half your shit for hanging around for 6 months is stupid. Prenup is the only way to go if you have any assets at all.
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wtf does that even mean? in Australia at least, if you live with a woman for 6 months, she owns half your assets by default (unless you got a good lawyer or have a pre-nup).
In the United States such a thing is referred to as "common law marriage", but it's not part of the law in every state in even in the states where it is, the legal requirement is much longer than 6 months (don't know if it's the norm, but in South Carolina the term is 7 years together).
As to prenups being stupid, I have to disagree. They're not an expectation that something will wrong - they're protection in case something DOES go wrong. Same applies to any type of insurance. I have term life insurance
Re:Blegh (Score:4, Insightful)
Sell them to the highest bidder. Then split the money. If you can't sell it destroy it.
shared data: Delete it... Or make a duplicate copy of it...
accounts: Close them and make yourself new ones.
Domains: Sell it to the highest bidder and split the cash.
hosting: Copy the data split it if you can, make duplicate copies and delete the rest. Then cancel your hosting.
email: Shared Emails what are you some type of idiot... Well email everyone with your new email and cancel your old one.
sensitive data backups: Divide what is yours and what is hers. If you both need it you make a copy of it.
social media: change your relationship status.
Being however had asked such a stupid question I would expect what will happen is your ex will get it all. As you are either really dumb or gullible, to share such items... Or you are so dense that you can't realize that digital data can be copied.
However if you have any common sense you are going to remember to try to be fare with your divorce. If your not, you will be the bad guy.
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You shouldn't have destroyed your individuality by combining all of these things. If you hadn't, maybe you wouldn't be getting divorced.
Or at least they wouldn't be getting divorced this early. Had they not shared email or cell bills, someone might have gotten away with what ever they were up to for quite a bit longer.
But in other respects, you are spot on. If you can't trust a spouse to have a separate email, facebook, music, ebook, movie account then that person should probably not be a spouse in the first place.
Apart from sharing a cell account to get a substantially cheaper rate, other things like movie and ebook accounts are drop dea
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Easy Enough.
Go to Photo Directory- Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C
Go to backup-harddrive Ctrl-V
Problem of who gets the photos/documents solved.
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A "real geek" already has a cron job that covers it.
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Re:Blegh (Score:4, Insightful)
1) "Family time" - you + her + kids or extended family (parents, cousins, etc...)
2) "Couple time" - time when it's just you and her.
3) "Alone time" - when you both are completely separated and "do your own thing".
There are certain things that we each like that the other doesn't (or doesn't to the same degree). She HATES the cold and I love to ski... doesn't mean I have to give up skiing, I just don't take her with me when I go. Every so often one of us stays home with our son and the other goes out for a "guys night out / girls night out" and I honestly feel we are both the better for it. Being with someone means combining and sharing a multitude of things, but you don't have to lose yourself in the process.
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what state allows that? Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois says, one name on the title.
Alaska, for one. My wife has a truck. I have a truck and I have a motorcycle. On every title and DMV registration slip, you will see both of our names. In fact, we get really creative up here. If the title says "John Q. Doe and Jane P. Doe", both of you have to sign the registration to transfer the title to someone else. If the title says "John Q. Doe or Jane P. Doe" then either one of you can sign to transfer the title to someone else. Both options have obvious advantages and di
easy (Score:3, Insightful)
burn it on a dvd and call it a day
Shared data (Score:5, Funny)
If only there were a way to make multiple copies of digital information...
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If only there were a way to make multiple copies of digital information and not get the pants sued off me.
FTFY.
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Oh, you don't have to sue me to get my pants off!
Can you ascribe a monetary value to these assets (Score:3)
If yes, just tell your lawyer that number. Don't have a lawyer? Stop wasting time asking the Internet for advice and get one.
Secondarily, do they sentimental value? Most courts are willing to take that into account as well.
Shared accounts?!? (Score:2)
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I had to combine my accounts when my wife lost her job years ago. Makes planning for the family much easier if one person has a hold of the purse strings, in my opinion.
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I use gmail my wife uses yahoo... And we really don't care what each other uses.
Because it is free email account.
Just been through this myself ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. (Score:5, Funny)
That was the most round-about way ever of saying "My parents are throwing my 38 year old ass out of the basement."
Play nice (Score:2)
Talk to your lawyer . . . (Score:3)
More seriously -- it's all about classifying property. Depending on state law, you may be able to retain individual ownership of some accounts / and anything business related, like a domain for a small business. Any interest you have in a company is likely to get split in half, if the company owns the digital assets then the ownership is derivative. If you have domain names you need for work, consider asking your spouse to consent to a flat evaluation at the price of registration -- create a corporation/LLC for your business identity and trasfer the assets out for good value.
Else -- SEE YOUR LAWYER.
-GiH.
Yeah... (Score:2)
I'm not really trying to sound like an ass, but if you merged your email addresses, you're on your own.
Foresight. Use it.
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You'll have to wait for the ReDigi case (Score:2)
Most Shared? (Score:2)
Is most of that really shared? I guess having a shared email account makes a kind of sense, but not really.
If you have a combined email account/Facebook account you cannot really just have one person take over the use of them. I think your divorce has rendered such things as worthless.
Other things on that list come off as something you can continue to share.
But at the end of the day it is all a case by case scenario. What are you expecting? /. to come out and say: "ah, Domains, well obviously those always g
Interesting question .... (Score:2)
I went through a (by all counts HORRIBLY messy) divorce myself, some years ago. But at that time, despite both of us being avid "computer people", there was no such thing as "social networking" websites or "cloud storage".
I'm not even sure there was much in the way of "digital data" we felt we needed to divvy up?
As I think about this now, though, I think it does make yet one more strong argument against DRM. It would have been a much bigger hassle if all of my purchased music, video content, or even digital
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And don't forget the reason that divorce costs so much....because it's totally worth it.
Some (possibly obvious) points for you to consider (Score:5, Insightful)
If the "digitial assets" have significant monetary value: ask your lawyer. (the "digital assets" probably have low monetary value, or you wouldn't be asking about them here.)
If the "digitial assets" have significant sentimental value: burn yourself a copy, hand them over to your future-ex, and sincerely say "Thank you for the wonderful memories."
(Just out of curiosity on my part, what kind of advice did you expect to get without actually describing the nature and value of the "digital assets"?)
Lastly, consider this: how important is it for you to win?
Divorces can be ugly. I've seen friends destroy each others sanity and inflict long-term damage on their souls in order to "win" and "be right"
Five years from now, would you rather be busy enjoying a new chapter in your life or sipping daily from a nasty glass of old & bitter resentments?
They go to the technical one (Score:2)
How do you split future revenue from IP? (Score:2)
Where this will hurt is Steam.... (Score:3)
when my 12 yr old grows up and moves out a lot of the games, but not all, were bought more for his benefit. I don't mind getting logged out occasionally now since he'll generally ask since he's in the house anyway. But when he moves out and 1/2 way across the country, potentially, co-ordinating the use of a single account will be a pain. I'll probably have to create a 2nd account for my exclusive use, since most of the money is tied up in his games...
What's the problem? (Score:3)
Domains - the name listed in whois is the owner of record.
Hosting - the name listed on the account. The other party should get their own hosting account (any pre-paid hosting should be pro-rated at 50% to the other party).
email -for each PAID email account, the name listed on the account is the owner. For freemail accounts, you don't "own" them anyway, so each of you just get a new account already - it's not like it costs anything - then set the auto-responder in the freemail account to give both your new email addresses, then give the account login info to someone in trust who will change the secondary contact info and login to something random. Or give it to the kids (if any).
data - you each own your own data, as per copyright. Whoever created the original data, they own the rights to the backups as well. Be nice - share anything that the other person is in, such as pictures, since they also have a right to those. Exceptions: "intimate" pictures - give them to the person who is in the picture and destroy any other copies - don't you even think of "sharing" those without permission, and you'll end up with a police record, same as Libby [last name redacted]'s ex boyfriend did when he "shared them" with her parents, grandparents, etc.
social media - why is this a problem? Social media accounts are not "property" and you do not "own" them, as per your contract with whatever provider you're using. If this is about a "family" account, each of you create an account under your own name, post a note on the family account pointing to the new accounts, then as part of the agreement the family account is either nuked, or given to a 3rd party in trust who changes the contact information and password, then deactivates it.
It's a divorce - the two biggest words are move on. None of the stuff listed above is worth fighting over 99.999% of the time.
Here's your checklist (Score:4, Interesting)
If you can copy it (CDs, MP3s, data on cloud storage), each person gets a copy.
If it's locked down with DRM (iTunes) assign a value and divvy up along with physical assets.
If it's a photo from your time together, put it in an archive directory called "/poisoned" and never open that directory again.
Most email accts and social media are per individual, but if not, just let it go and start fresh.
If it's critical to your future (the domain for your business), cover it in the divorce decree.
Re:Simple... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)