Self storage and divorce

What do you do with all the goods and chattels you have to give to your husband or wife when you divorce, and how do you do it?

I debated this for quite some time during my long and painful divorce process. At first I considered having my husband come to the house and then dividing the spoils between us, and him taking away what he wanted – especially that awful standard lamp I had always hated.

Dividing the spoils

I had nightmares about it all, so instead I hit on the idea of deciding on who would keep what through emails. Making an inventory takes time, but is a practical way of making decisions in a calm and reasonable way, and the children don’t need to know what is going on either.

But when you have come to a decision over who keeps what, how do you deliver the goods to your ex when any kind of meeting is difficult? A friend came up with a brilliant idea – SELF STORAGE!

Self storage to the rescue

The storage space becomes the safe house, where you can deliver his or her things and then pass the key onto him/her without even meeting. But of course you do have to do this in such a way that your ex is paying for his/her (oh hang it! Let’s say “their”) storage and not you. So you need to set up the storage agreement in their name and with their bank details.

If your ex is anxious to get their hands on their things, it may be necessary to move their stuff into storage before you actually downsize to your new house. But for the children’s sake I thought it better to wait until we moved, so that they didn’t notice things going.

When the removal men came to estimate the price of moving my stuff to the new house I explained that there would have to be a separate lorry to take my husband’s stuff to the self storage lock-up. I knew he wouldn’t pay for the removal, but it didn’t cost very much extra. The removal men suggested doing this the night before.

So on the eve of moving I sat up in the lorry beside the removal men and went to the self storage lock-up. They helped me carefully put all my ex’s stuff into the metal box. It was a bit like a game of Jenga, with all the bits slotted on top of one another, but we managed it.

The big move

The following morning, the children and I moved house. I will never forget the vans all moving off and me cramming in the kids and animals into the old Rover. We drove up Croxted Road with the cat screeching all the way. Then as we drove over one of the bumps, a tyre burst. I drove the rest of the way at five miles an hour with a flat tyre and everyone laughing, except the cat.

The children delivered the storage key to their Dad on their next weekend visit. I never heard another word about it all until about a year later, when my son told me he was meeting his Dad at the storage lock-up to help him move some other things into it and take some old things out. I was pleased – he was using it for more than the purpose I had set it up for him. It had been a really efficient and non-confrontational way of dealing with the division of the spoils: everyone was happy.

And I was so glad to have got rid of that standard lamp at last.

2 Responses to “Self storage and divorce”

1. Antony says:

   April 23, 2010 at 9:42 am

   A BBC Radio 4 sitcom was broadcast in 2007 and 2009, called “Self-Storage”. It centred on a guy who uses self storage following a divorce, and ends up actually living in the unit. It’s self storage and divorce on another level – literally “self storage”!

   The sitcom starred Reece Shearsmith (better known as one third of The League of Gentlemen). Alas, it’s no longer available on iPlayer (shame!), but here are a few links:

   http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f8174
   http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/radio/self_storage/
   http://www.lofg.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2036

2. Mark Keenan says:

   November 7, 2011 at 12:01 pm

   I have used storage solutions in the past by agreement until the financial situation had been resolved. It reduced the friction between the parties and allowed them to get the major stuff out of the way which made dividing up the Cliff Richard records much easier.