Adult Son Financial Question [View all]

I'm looking for ideas / opinions on a fair way to deal with this.

About five years ago my son and I pooled our resources and bought a used boat for $15,000. I live on a lake and we keep the boat here, my son lives about an hour away and has always had free reign to use it whenever he wanted.

At first he used it a fair amount, and quite often both of us would go fishing or else just joy ride. More recently he's pretty much lost interest in it and I'm the only one that uses it. AND as time went by I became the only one to pay for and do maintenance / repairs / wash & wax etc.

Now he's seriously thinking about moving 800 miles away, and if he goes through with it I'll need to figure out how to deal with his share of the boat.

On one hand it could be argued that he's the one moving away and that the most he can expect is to get half the proceeds whenever I decide to sell the boat (which might happen in 3 or 4 years).

OR do we agree on a fair price and I pay him for half of the boat (that would mean pulling extra money from my IRA and paying taxes on that amount - I was forced into retirement at the start of the pandemic).

OR is there something I haven't thought of?