Social Media Can Be An Asset – So Who Gets It in a Divorce?
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This episode is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. Washington Wise from Charles Schwab is an original podcast that unpacks the stories making news in Washington. Listen at schwab.com slash Washington Wise.
Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, October 30th. I'm Arianna Aspuru for The Wall Street Journal, filling in for J.R. Whelan. Social media pays the bills for millions of Americans. But in a divorce, that successful TikTok or Instagram account can become an asset worth fighting for.
It's not like a typical business or obviously a house or something where you can predict how much it's going to increase or decrease in value over time because anything can happen. It can suddenly go viral.
What problem arises when social media accounts become assets in a divorce?
So who gets the account? Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter Katherine Hamilton joins me after the break.
Listen at schwab.com slash washingtonwise.
Splitting up assets in a divorce can be tricky, especially if one of those assets is a social media account with millions of followers. Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter Katherine Hamilton joins me. Katherine, this seems like a fairly new dilemma. What are some of the reasons why someone's social media account would come up in a divorce?
It's definitely becoming a more common problem. There's 27 million people in the U.S. who make money from social media and 44% of them are doing it as a full-time job. So when you get divorced and your mainstream of income is from social media, then those accounts are basically like an asset, like a house or a boat that you have to value and then split up between the two partners.
How do you put a value on a social media account? Is it just followers?
Who is affected and how common is social-media income among creators?
It's really complicated. The money that's coming into a social media account is actually not really from followers or from views. It's primarily from brand partnerships. So if a company pays you to talk about their product in one of your videos, It's becoming a really common way for people to market their products. So that's where most influencers are getting a lot of their wealth, which can be up in the six figures per year. So when you get divorced, you'll have forensic accountants, attorneys who are all going to look at how much income your accounts have been bringing in over the last year or so. And then they're also going to look at how much money they expected to continue bringing in after you get divorced.
And that's where it gets a lot more tricky to evaluate because things can really change after you get divorced.
Yeah, I mean, with social media, you never know. You could become a success overnight. You could go viral. Does that potential to make money make things more complicated?
Yes, it's not like a typical business or obviously a house or something where you can predict how much it's going to increase or decrease in value over time because anything can happen. It can suddenly go viral. And if you're creating a lot of content that is about your personal life and your relationship and then you get divorced, that can cause a lot of people to unfollow you. You could lose a lot of popularity or people might be really into it and might actually help you make more money.
How does the type of content you make while you're still in that relationship impact what you could bring in if you get divorced?
One good example here is Kat and Mike Stickler, who were creating content together during the pandemic. They became really popular and they had a shared account called Mike and Kat, where they posted about their relationship. They had about 4 million followers. And when they got divorced, that account was a big asset in their divorce. And they had to figure out how to split it up. But because so much of their content was about their relationship, they knew that that was going to really change.
How do courts and accountants value a social media account during divorce proceedings?
It was really tricky to split it up. They had a YouTube and a TikTok channel. And so Mike got the YouTube and Kat got the TikTok. And she was able to rebrand and create her own content.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:54
2
What problem arises when social media accounts become assets in a divorce?
0:54–2:32
3
Who is affected and how common is social-media income among creators?
2:32–4:33
4
How do courts and accountants value a social media account during divorce proceedings?
4:33–7:24
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from WSJ Your Money Briefing
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