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“It Only Has to Hurt a Little”
The Gut Wrenching Battle
You just spent 9 of the worst months of your life, but it’s almost over. You had no idea divorce could be so painful. Your spouse, your partner, is now your
Accountants and financial experts gave reports and testified in court in excruciating details about your financial life, as did your ex-spouses experts. They understood your financial world better than you do. They all built their arguments on why you should get this or only that. Your future life was being determined by others.
In the past, you knew what to expect. Family income, you knew it was enough to pay the bills and add to your savings each year and take great vacations. You knew that each of you
So what do you do now?
If you’re the spouse paying support, you’re going to have to figure out what your new lifestyle will look like. What
New House Arrangements
- Can you still afford your current home if it was allocated to you?
- Can you afford to refinance the mortgage, to take your ex off the mortgage?
- Is the house upside down?
New Retirement Plans
The lawyers made you do a QDRO, a complex agreement that either gives a part of your pension to your
- Is that something you want to do now, or once you or your
ex retires ?
New Accounts Arrangements
What about all those bank accounts, brokerage accounts, IRAs, education accounts and credit card balances. The decree says who gets what, but now you need to get them all transferred and you need to understand the tax
If you’re the spouse getting
- Will you have to get a job? Will it pay enough to meet your needs?
- What if your
ex gets sick and is unable to provide what is decreed? - What if you get sick and bills exceed the support you’re receiving?
It may be that you have not worked for 13 years…..finding a job won’t be easy. You have all the same problems as your ex-spouse above but with less certainty because you’re still reliant on them for the time being.
Make the Battle worth the fight!
This is the story of half of all American marriages. The first lesson to learn from the horrible picture painted above is that it doesn’t need to be ugly. If you perform a Lifestyle analysis to project a future budget during the divorce, you can understand what post-divorce life will look like for you.
A Lifestyle analysis measures exactly how you will live post-divorce. It is based on how you lived during the
How do I do a Lifestyle Analysis?
You can work with your attorney or a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA). Attorneys are not trained to perform financial analysis or projections. That’s what a CDFA does; financial analysis during
Some of the ugliness of Divorce can be removed simply by educating both parties on the most equitable
Once the divorce is settled, both of your financial lives have been projected and tested….so you know what
The CDFA then implements the divorce by transferring assets, refinancing debt, implementing the QDRO,
When the smoke clears you will know your budget, settle into your new living arrangements, have your accounts transferred and invested appropriately, insurances in place, wills set up and future defined, all neatly packaged and ready for your new life.
Michael Black, CFP, CDFA
Michael Phillips Black Wealth Management