When Love Leaves the Building: And Takes Your Art With It
- Gunna Freivalde
- Sep 10
- 13 min read
Written by GUNNA FREIVALDE | AMG ATTORNEYS
Picasso once stated, "Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life." But what happens when life's dust swells into a storm? When the tornado of divorce tears through your world, stirring up not just emotions but unsettling questions: Who gets to keep the paintings? The sculptures? The memories cast in bronze?
When the frame that once held dreams together begins to shatter under the weight
of reality, it feels like everything is lost. Art should never become collateral damage.
Yet, through these very cracks in the frame, light eventually will find its way in –
lighting up corners that were once forgotten, uncovering new beginnings, new dreams, and new harmony.
Divorce is like an unfinished masterpiece – raw, exposed, yet full of possibilities.
For artists, the division is not just a matter of assets but of their identity – the very works that hold fragments of one’s soul. So, as Jean-Paul Sartre wisely put it, “Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you”. So yes, while divorce feels like a wrecking ball, it also grants you a future where you can reclaim your authorship of your life, your art, and your future.
FROM "WE" TO "ME"
The law - beautiful in its logic, yet as cold and unyielding as the British Museum when it comes to returning the Elgin Marbles to Greece - sees things very differently than the artist’s heart does. Your masterpiece, a peak of years of emotion and technique, is being considered by law in a more practical approach. It is considered tangible property, much like your car or your house,
or that coffee machine that refuses to work when you need it most. The law tends to treat your artwork as something you own, but exactly who gets which piece in a divorce depends on your country and how you handled money as a couple. Don’t take it personally – it’s not an attack on your soul or creativity, but a necessary framework for dividing the marital
estate when love has left the building.
In the US, which is a patchwork of state laws, the law often looks to provide balance for both sides. In community property states, like California, the rule of thumb is simple: everything acquired during the marriage, including those canvases and expensive brushes, is jointly owned and usually split down the middle. Just like that wedding cake that was sliced in equal parts, even if one slice had the cherry on top. In equitable distribution states, such as New York or Florida, a judge will seek a “fair”, however, not necessarily equal division. Factors like each spouse’s contribution to marriage, financial standing, and even the artist’s potential future earnings can tip the scales. Courts will probably look at whether your work appreciated in value due to your spouse’s exceptional networking skills to boost the value of it, keeping the date of the work’s creation as a secondary plan.
So, here’s a tip: you should dust off your diary and look for the date when your artwork was created, not when it was sold. Artwork made before you got to slice your wedding cake is generally considered as a separate property. However – and this is a big one – if your spouse helped boost its value during the marriage, that increased worth might as well become a marital asset.
Take, for example, the Worth v. Worth (1987, California Court of Appeal) case, where the court had to wrestle with whether the royalties from novels authored during the marriage belonged to the writer alone or to the marriage. The judges made it clear and plain – while the spark of creativity may be a solitary happening, the financial fruits it bears during marriage are part
of the shared harvest. Talk about blind Themis now!
Thankfully, in the U.S., VARA gives qualifying artists limited moral rights, such as attribution and integrity for certain visual works, subject to important exceptions and possible written waiver. It still doesn’t control who owns the physical work in a divorce, but at least no one can take away your name from your work or alter its integrity without your say-so. So, while the physical canvas might have to be divided, your authorship remains yours – a small but significant victory for your soul.
In the EU, the law of divorce whispers a different story: there are shared principles on jurisdiction and recognition, but the real script is written by national laws and local traditions. There is no one-size-fits-all here. In France, the community of acquisitions often gathers in everything created or acquired during the marriage. In the Czech Republic, marital property rules reach wide but leave some space for personal assets. In Portugal, the regime chosen at marriage – community or separation – can tip the scales entirely. In Belgium, outcomes turn on the couple’s matrimonial regime and how each artwork is classified, not on a single
blanket rule.
So, whether you are in Paris, Prague, or Porto, your artwork made over late nights and buckets of coffee may well find itself on the marital balance sheet – but how it’s valued, divided, or excluded depends on which legal frame the local legal curator applies. The one thing you can rely on across the Union is your resale right, which flows EU-wide, guaranteeing that you will get your brushstroke share whenever your works change hands on the market.
Of course, prenuptial agreements can change the course of that cracked marriage ship. These contracts, which at the time might have felt like cold water on your declaration of love, can be the lifeboats that save what’s yours once the divorce horizon comes into view.
Because, to be honest, creativity may not have a fixed price, but the frames sure do. As Anaïs Nin has wisely said, “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage”. Sometimes, courage means thinking ahead of the storms that will never come.
A telling example is the European Court of Justice’s decision in Hadadi v. Mesko (2009) that didn’t divide up a single brushstroke. Instead, it decided something just as critical – where a cross-border couple could even file for divorce. Both spouses held dual nationality, and the Court confirmed that either nationality gave them a choice of forum.
So, if you hold a passport from more than one country, the forum for you isn’t a formality – it can change the way your entire property will be split. Same couple, same assets, but that simple “mine” and “yours” you imagined just a moment ago can now blur into a shared “ours”, at least in the eyes of the law.
BEYOND PRICE TAGS AND PROVENANCE
Now, how do you measure the worth of that unforgettable sunset you froze on your canvas? Or that sculpture that catches the light and refuses to let it go, the one you made as a gift to your spouse’s mother but never handed over?
To you, these works are fragments of your soul. To the court, they are simply “assets” – no different from that old summer house you barely used or the BMW whose blinkers you never quite figured out.
When the romance disappears, it’s far better to decide together who keeps what before the decision is left to strangers in the courtroom. Otherwise, you might find yourself living a scene straight out of Marriage Story – where Adam Driver gets the piano, but not the kid.
In real life, it is usually even messier. Judges are nowhere close to being curators, and the law does not concern itself with brushstrokes and emotional resonance. All it cares about is documentation, ownership, and valuation. If you can’t prove who owns the painting, the sculpture, or even that sweet sketch on the napkin you made a while ago and still love it, it may be treated like any other piece of your marital property – split, sold, or awarded to the party with the stronger paper trail and “sassier” lawyer.
A quick tip from the trenches: keep a clear, dated inventory of every work you have created – from your earliest doodles to your latest “pièce maîtresse”. Add receipts, photos, and any appraisal notes. If you know the market for your work is heating up – perhaps the latest exhibition got amazing reviews, or a celebrity just acquired a piece for their living room – timing will be your secret weapon. Push for an early valuation if prices are likely to drop, or a later one if they are soaring. It’s called strategic survival. Courts often set the valuation date by statute or judicial discretion, which could be the date of separation, or sometimes the date of trial. As Coco Chanel wisely said, “The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.” In this case, the act of declaring ownership, valuing your work at the right moment, and agreeing on division is your courage—the lighthouse in a stormy sea.
The irony of it? The creation may be priceless to you, but in a property division, it might as well end up with a number scribbled next to it by an appraiser, a person who is fluent in the language of provenance, condition, and the unpredictable and vulnerable heartbeat of the market. They will comb through auction results, gallery sales, and the dusty corners of catalogues raisonnés. And in the end, your masterpiece will be reduced to a line item in a spreadsheet. Sometimes, you’ll find yourself performing in an opera of absurdity, arguing over whether a half-faded sketch is worth $200 or $2000. Few divorces show the mess of what art and money on the same page can do. In Macklowe v. Macklowe (New York, 2018 onward), the billionaire couple’s dispute over their $700 million art collection eventually led to one of the most lucrative auctions in history. What began in 2018 as a marital property case in the New York Supreme Court spiralled into a Sotheby’s sale in 2021 – 2022, with works of Rothko, Giacometti, and Warhol fetching record prices. Moral of the story? They could have sold the art, split the proceeds, and booked two separate Maldives holidays.
As Leonard Cohen sang in his Anthem, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. And through these cracks – where market value meets personal meaning – that light for compromise often shines through. A good settlement, careful record keeping or a prenuptial arrangement might not only keep your art intact but also save your time and sanity. Because when someone tries to count your brushstrokes like coins, you will have the story on paper that will remind them they are not just buying paints and brushes, but also
a piece of your life and soul.
THE VALUE IN THE INCOMPLETE
In the legal world, incompletion of your artwork does not equate to irrelevance. As Ludwig Wittgenstein noted, “The work of the philosopher consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose”, and the same can be said for art. Even a half-formed sculpture, rough pencil lines on canvas, or an unedited track can possess considerable speculative value. From a practical point of view, unfinished works may be valued using comparable sales, anticipated completion costs, and the artist’s reputation path. However, when it comes to the courts, the unfinished or in-progress pieces are a tricky subject. Some courts will treat them as marital assets if you have done most of the work by the time it gets on the list of marital assets, while others will discount speculative valuations or exclude works started after the separation cutoff. Valuations are often heavily debated in these cases and may require further testimony.
After Alexander McQueen’s death in 2010, sixteen looks from his unfinished Autumn/Winter 2010 collection were completed by his design team and later presented in a small, private show – demonstrating how incomplete works can still hold significant artistic and monetary value.
Similarly, an unsigned yet authenticated manuscript draft by Leonard Cohen caught attention at auction precisely due to its intimate portrayal of his creative process and work in progress. Such examples focus on the fascination of incomplete art, showing that even unfinished creations have the potential to command substantial value.
In conclusion, the value of incomplete artwork in divorce settlements should not be underestimated. By recognising the inherent worth of these unique pieces, both parties can leverage their potential to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome, transforming the uncertainty of incompletion into an asset.
In settlement negotiations, this undeveloped value often becomes a bargaining counter. A non-artist spouse may well agree to waive any future claims on post-divorce revenues from these works in exchange for relief from a portion of shared marital debt. Although this compromise might seem as daring as graffiti on a museum wall, it could ultimately prove a sharp move, freeing both parties from financial messes and allowing you to work on what you love the most: your art.
THE NO-GO LIST
Divorce is already a high-stakes exhibition – you are managing a bunch of critics (lawyers), curators (judges), and the occasional disbeliever (your soon-to-be ex-spouse). Believe me, the last thing you want to do after all the progress you’ve made is splash an unfavourable shade of bad decisions. Until the divorce and property division have been fully signed, sealed, and delivered, resist the urge to sell, loan, or even “accidentally” destroy your art – no matter how much it might feel like an act of poetic justice.
If your spouse agrees to a sale or loan, profits will need to be calculated and split, no matter how much you’d rather put all that money into the piggy bank for a new apartment or studio rent. Some artists try to outsmart others, attempting to torpedo the value of a piece by disowning it. The court, however, will not be amused by these avant-garde revenge tactics. Case in point - Arnold Herstand & Co. v. Gertrude Stein Inc. shows such tactics tend to be quickly discovered. The fight here was not even between spouses, but over the very authenticity of Balthus’s painting. Collectors and dealers found themselves in litigation when the artist himself changed whether the artwork attributed to him was genuine. The verdict? The court concluded Balthus was trying to make the piece unmarketable as a form of payback. Spoiler: it didn’t work.
CREATIVE CUSTODY AND YOUR INTELLECTUAL OFFSPRING
Divorce is already a whirlwind of emotion – let alone figuring out who keeps the cat, that oversized bronze sculpture, or the sketch you can’t bear to part with. Beyond those everyday routine evidence pieces lies another layer – protecting your intellectual offspring,
a process as elaborate as a Pollock painting and as delicate as a Renaissance fresco. Copyrights, moral rights and artistic creations connect you to your soul’s labour, and you need a hand of steel to protect those.
In the US, copyright laws grant artists exclusive control over their works, but distribution depends on whether your state follows equitable distribution or community property doctrines. The equitable distribution doctrine, a sword of Damocles hanging over your head, threatening to sever the once unbreakable ties between you and your artwork, will most probably be divided “fairly”, which does not translate into “equally”. Meanwhile, the community property states, such as California, assume that everything acquired during
the marriage is jointly owned. Meanwhile, the artist's moral rights—the right to claim authorship and shield their creations from indignities—hang precariously in the balance, with protection varying between states.
Across the pond, the EU paints a brighter picture, but the legal sunrise differs from country to country. Moral rights are generally stronger here than in the U.S., and the release right runs across the entire EU, guaranteeing that you share in the life of your works long after the first sale. Yet when it comes to divorce, the EU is no single gallery with one set of rules. Each member state hangs its own legal landscape – France with its community property traditions,
Germany with its Zugewinngemeinschaft, and the Nordics with their separate-property models where each gets to keep their own carefully assembled IKEA nightstand. So, while the copyright frame is in balance, the picture of who gets what in divorce remains painted in national colours.
However, after all, the true measure of a successful divorce lies not only in the division of assets but in the preservation of one's artistic soul. So, when love leaves the building, your art should not have to follow a gavel’s beat. The courtroom, with its uncomfortable chairs and starchy décor, is the artist’s exact opposite. It’s a place where emotional resonance is dismissed as idle talk. This is where mediation, a gentler and far more creative alternative, steps into action.
Here, instead of being handed a final, unyielding judgement by a stranger, you and your spouse can co-create the terms of your separation. You retain authorship not only over the final draft of the former “we” status, but also over your art. Mediation gives you a voice, and even though it does not do magic, it can be a lifeline when you feel like you’ve been treading water for too long. You can argue for the non-monetary value of that abstract piece you painted after a trip to Morocco, a work a judge might overlook or dismiss as “a canvas with splashes in blue”. It allows for nuance, for stories, and for the kind of give-and-take that a shared life has gathered. There is a place for understanding, facilitating a more equitable distribution of marital assets, a special approach to your art, and a possibility to address the emotional weight of the divorce proceedings.
FINDING THE QUIET AFTER THE STORM
There are times in life when the storm seems endless. The pain is not always loud – sometimes it is a slow but persistent ache, quietly reminding of something once tender, now only a source of stress. Divorce may feel like a gallery in closing – walls stripped, canvases rearranged, and echoes of past collaborations remaining in the air. Yet even in this space, where endings are imminent, there is an unexpected kind of hope. As Frida Kahlo once said, “I paint my own reality.” Endings give space for new beginnings. No judge, no legal guide, no spreadsheet can take away the authenticity of your vision or the emotional print of your work and determination.
In the end, a successful resolution isn’t just about dollars, property, or ownership papers. It is about regaining authorship over your life and your art. It is about ensuring that your unfinished sketches, sculptures in uncertainty, manuscripts in process continue to evolve, not becoming a punching bag in the mess of today. Remember, the light always finds its way through the cracks. And in this light, we find that moving forward isn’t about erasing the past
but stepping into a space where we can breathe freely again. Divorce might crack the frame, but it should not make you doubt the existence of love, nor diminish the beauty of what you have created, or about to create.
Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and is not meant to provide legal advice. Readers should not construe or rely on any comment or statement in this article as legal advice. For legal advice, readers should seek consultation with an attorney.
Gunna Freivalde is the legal maestro behind AMG Attorneys, where art and law collide in the most harmonious of ways. Based in Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland, Gunna is a legal ninja, wielding her expertise across borders with finesse.
And there's more! You'll also find her donning her arbitrator hat at The Court of Arbitration for Arts in The Hague, Netherlands - because who says legal proceedings can't be a work of art?
When she's not busy untangling legal knots or advocating for artistic justice (those rare moments), you can catch her donning her superhero cape as Legal Trustee at Tigers4Ever, a UK-based charity dedicated to wildlife conservation. Saving tigers by day, slaying legal dragons by night or vice versa - it's all in a day's work!
However, Gunna's most important role is being a full-time mom to two artistic teenagers and a furry squad of three cats, a dog, a horse, and a ferret (because every legal eagle needs a fuzzy sidekick).
And when the chaos of the day finally settles, you'll find Gunna unwinding with a well-deserved glass of wine, dreaming of a world where art reigns supreme, and justice is served with a side of creativity. Because hey, who says you can't change the world one masterpiece at a time?
AMG ATTORNEYS
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