  We identify ambiguities in the available frameworks for defining quantum,
classical, and total correlations as measured by discordlike quantifiers. More
specifically, we determine situations for which either classical or quantum
correlations are not uniquely defined due to degeneracies arising from the
optimization procedure over the state space. In order to remove such
degeneracies, we introduce a general approach where correlations are
independently defined, escaping therefore from a degenerate subspace. As an
illustration, we analyze the trace-norm geometric quantum discord for two-qubit
Bell-diagonal states.
