When thinking of dissolution of marriage, people imagine debates about who gets the houses, vehicles, and bank accounts. However, photographs and home movies are some of the most treasured personal keepsakes and mementos in a family. This means that in the event of a marriage dissolving, they often come up during property division.

The custody talks over these beloved items can become just as heated as those over larger property. It doesn't have to be such a fight when there are ways to share media without depriving either ex-spouse of these snapshots and videos of memories.

Photographs can be scanned and printed out or uploaded to a photo hosting website, so that an ex-spouse and children can have access to them at any time. High quality scanners are no longer prohibitively expensive and photos can be scanned in groups, making the task go more quickly.

There are also sites that offer the opportunity to create high quality photo books, allowing family pictures to be arranged into new albums that can be given to perhaps smooth over feelings about the custody arrangements surrounding these important keepsakes.

Adapters for video to computer captures are excellent for older family videos that need to be shared. DVDs can be created from video tapes and even old film strips using adapters and inexpensive software. There are many businesses out there that offer this service to people who are not confident that they can execute the task well, not up to watching hours of family memories, or do not have the equipment.

All these processes can make sharing family memories easy and relatively stress-free without having the ex-spouses meet in person.

Source: Huffington Post online, "After Divorce: Joint Custody for Photo Albums and Home Videos," John Seed, 18 July 2011