Estate & inheritance · 8 min read

Selling an airplane during a divorce — the FAA, the court, and the title company

I get a version of this call every so often, and it usually starts carefully: "We're separating, and there's an airplane." Whatever else is happening in a divorce, an airplane is an unusual asset to untangle — it isn't a bank account you can split with a spreadsheet, and it isn't a house a realtor lists next week. It has its own federal registration, its own title chain, and its own carrying costs that don't pause for a court date. Here's how the airplane part actually works, separate from everything else your attorney is handling.

Figure out who can actually sign, before you talk about price

The first question isn't "what's it worth," it's "who has the legal authority to sell it." If the airplane is titled in both spouses' names, both signatures are typically needed on the FAA bill of sale regardless of what a settlement says informally — the FAA registry doesn't know about a verbal agreement, only about what's on file. If it's titled in one spouse's name only, that person can usually sign, but the settlement or a court order may still need to say the proceeds are handled a certain way. This is exactly the kind of question your divorce attorney should answer before a buyer is ever involved — get that confirmed in writing early, because finding out mid-sale that a signature is missing is the single most common thing that stalls one of these deals.

Let the court set the terms; let the sale just execute them

Where I see these go sideways is when the airplane itself becomes a proxy for the larger disagreement — one spouse wants to wait for a better market, the other wants it gone this month, and the airplane sits while the fight continues around it. My honest advice: get the court or your settlement agreement to decide the terms — whether it sells, how proceeds split, any minimum-price floor either side wants — and then let the actual sale be a boring, mechanical transaction that just carries out what's already been decided. The less the sale itself has to be negotiated in the moment, the less there is to fight about.

If you're both still cooperating reasonably, you can handle this the same way co-owners handle ending a partnership — get an outside number on the airplane that neither of you controls, agree on the split in writing, and use a neutral third party to move the money. The mechanics are nearly identical whether the co-ownership is ending because of a partnership or a marriage.

Get a number neither of you has to trust the other one on

Whatever the airplane is actually worth becomes part of the marital estate, so both sides usually want to know it's a real number, not one side's guess. A no-obligation cash offer or a professional appraisal — ideally both — gives you a figure that came from outside the marriage entirely, which tends to lower the temperature considerably compared to one spouse insisting on a number the other doesn't believe.

Keep the money moving through a paper trail, not a handshake

This is not the transaction to handle with a personal check and an informal agreement about who deposits what. Run it through a licensed title and escrow company, the same as any other aircraft sale — here's how that process works. Escrow confirms clear title, handles the FAA paperwork, and disburses funds according to whatever split was agreed to, so there's a clean, documented record of exactly what happened and when. That record matters more in a divorce than almost any other sale — it's evidence, not just convenience.

Weigh speed against the theoretical top dollar

A broker listing can chase a higher retail number, but it takes months — months where the airplane still needs a hangar, insurance, and upkeep, all of which usually get argued about too, and months where the divorce can't fully close while an asset is still on the market. A cash sale trades some of that top-end price for a firm closing date and one clean number to split, which is often worth more than the extra dollars once you count the carrying costs and the extra months of the process staying open. I walk through that trade-off in more detail in this comparison of cash sales versus broker listings.

What I'd actually do

Confirm signing authority with your attorney first — who's on title, who needs to sign, and whether the settlement needs specific language about the sale.
Get the terms decided by the court or agreement, not negotiated during the sale itself. Keep the sale mechanical.
Get an outside valuation so the number isn't "his estimate" or "her estimate."
Run everything through escrow for a documented, disinterested paper trail.

If an airplane is part of what you're working through right now, we're glad to give you a straight, no-obligation number on it — whichever of you reaches out, or your attorney directly. It's one less unknown in an already complicated process, and one clean transaction instead of one more thing to negotiate.

Ready for a number? See how our cash offers work — or jump to your model: Sell your Cessna 172 · Sell your Piper Cherokee