When selling or transferring assets in the process of dividing them during a divorce, spouses need to be careful to avoid unnecessary capital gains taxes and gift taxes. An accountant can help you follow Internal Revenue Service (IRS) rules about timing and documentation to do a transfer incident to divorce and steer clear of or minimize these taxes. Another thing to keep in mind is the potential future tax liability of any assets that you receive. Let’s say you get the taxable brokerage account and your spouse gets the retirement account, each of which is worth $100,000 today. Without considering the future taxes that will be due when selling and withdrawing assets from those accounts, this division is likely to be unfair.