Under section 86 of the Family Law Act, unless otherwise agreed, the value of property should be the fair market value and it should be valued when the agreement is made.

There's a lot of confusion about this part. We do not use the date of separation to value assets and debts. If a couple years pass from the time you separate to the time you actually sign an agreement, a lot can change in the value of that property.

Take for example a house. If you separate and the house is worth $800,000, it's possible after a couple of years that it could be worth a million. Who would get the benefit of that substantial increase? It's for that reason that the law is to use the current value as of the time that you make your agreement so that you share in the growth and that no one person benefits from an increase or decrease in property.

You can agree to use different values though. And although it's not common to do that, you are free to agree to so if you both feel that it's more fair in the circumstances. If you decide to use different values, you should consider having support paid from the time of the date that you did the asset valuation as well.

In normal circumstances, you would divide all your assets and then support would start around the same time. That way, you both have access to the same type of funds at the same time. It's the cleanest and most straightforward thing to do. And so, that's why we use today's values.

If you do decide to value property at a different time, you should also consider having support payable from the date you did the asset valuation just to be consistent in your timelines. You typically want to have support payable at the time that you do your division of property so that you both have access to money and income.

The cleanest and most straightforward thing to do is to use today's values. But if your circumstances are such that it wouldn't be fair, please get legal advice about that, particularly about the timing of the valuation and how that might relate to support and other expenses.

It's really important to have a good idea of the values of the assets and debts that you have. It's easy to determine the value of financial accounts by looking back at bank statements, but for other assets, it's often hard to find the value, and you might need some assistance in verifying those values.

We talk about how to value different items and what documents to gather in the financial document checklist. If you enter information about any exclusion, the financial document checklist will also be updated in Divii to help you figure out what type of information you'll need to gather.

Overall though, it's typical to have an appraisal of a house done if you want to buy the other person out of the interest. It's also typical to do a pension valuation if you want to buy the other person out of their interest in the pension. And it's typical to do car valuations or anything else like that if you want to buy them out of the interest. So that means if you want to keep property as your own, you're going to have to know what the value of that property is.

To contrast that, it's important to think about it the other way. You don't need to get an appraisal if you're going to sell the house because the market will determine the value. You don't need to know the value of your car if you're going to sell it because the market will determine the value. And you don't need to know the value of your pension if you're going to divide it equally with the pension corporation. The pension corporation will figure that out for you.

The general rule of thumb is if you want to keep a significant asset and you don't know the value of it, an appraisal or valuation will be helpful.