Worried about you who is going to be allowed to take possession of the family photographs in a divorce? When a couple parts ways, both spouses should be able to keep a copy of the family photos. Most pictures nowadays are digitalized, which makes copying and sharing a breeze. Older printed film photos can be scanned and digitalized or printed. The divvying up of photos isn’t so much a legal issue, but it’s definitely one concern a lot of couples have.

Ways to Make Copies of Family Photographs

One spouse should take it upon him or herself to make copies of the photos if both parties want them. If your photos are already digitalized, you can copy them onto CDs or put them in a cloud for easy sharing and downloading.

If you have hard copy photos, there are a couple of options for making copies.

  • Use your phone – If you have a high-quality camera on your phone, this is one of the easiest ways to copy photos. Make sure your lens and the photo are clean, take a clear, close-up shot, and crop using your favorite photo app. Then you can easily organize, send to a cloud and share.
  • Scan them – For the highest-quality copies, you can use your home scanner. You can scan multiple photos at once and crop them later. Select at least 300 dpi on your scanner settings and 600 dpi if you plan on printing them later.
  • Use a copy service – If you have tons of photos and scanning them all yourself seems overwhelming, you may opt to use a photo scanning service. Do an online search for service providers and see what they have to offer. The way they work is you ship all your photos to the company, and they scan, digitalize and even print for you if you’d like. Many of these companies also copy negatives and color slides, too. The average cost runs $0.22 to $0.33 per scan.

What About Wedding Photos? Should You Keep or Toss Them?

Many couples both want to keep family photos with the kids and pets but aren’t quite sure what to do about wedding photos. They may be a source of pain right now, you may want to get the out of your life as soon as possible, or you may be indifferent as to what happens to them.

But, if you have children, you might consider holding onto them. While you may be past that chapter of your life, your kids may find these photos very important later on. They probably have some happy memories of you two together, and keeping photos will enable them to remember that their parents were once a couple, and that although the dynamics have changed, they were brought into the world in love.

For help coming up with creative solutions for splitting the marital items, call divorce attorney Molly B. Kenny at (425) 460-0550 and schedule a consultation or fill out our online contact form.

Molly B. Kenny
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Divorce and Child Custody Attorney Serving Bellevue and Seattle Washington