A soft fork means that those that did not upgrade will remain in the same chain, so it is considered more safe.
A hard fork means that those that upgrade and those that do not will be in two different chains. A new coin is created, those who had the old coin get the same amount for the new coin. If the hard fork is desgined with replay protection you can transfer both coins independently, in case there is not you can separate them but it is a bit more complex.
However, sometimes soft forks can also split the chain in concrete situations. That would be the case of UASF in case it gets the objective of 70% of nodes but less than 51% hash power.
Ok I remember now. I researched this before thanks for the perfectly stated explanation. I basically do nothing actively with coins other than store them in wallets. I am somewhat naive.