What is Divorce Financial Planning?
The divorce will soon be your past but the decisions made during the process will have a significant impact on the future of you and your family. I can help create a picture of what your financial life may look like in the years following the divorce. We might look at the next five years or the next forty. Given a possible settlement scenario, how might each person fare? Will one spouse enjoy a comfortable lifestyle while the other barely scrapes by? Does the scenario meet the needs of the family? If not, how may it be modified to better take care of the lives in will impact?
Together we will look at the potential consequences of your proposed financial settlements before a commitment is made. After all, once divorce settlements are signed they are difficult to change.
Most divorcing couples genuinely try to arrive at a divorce settlement that works for both spouses. Unfortunately, what may look fair today often does not remain equitable over time.
I use my financial expertise in the area of divorce to facilitate conversations and often illustrate the potential impact of your proposed settlements by analyzing income, expenses, assets, liabilities, cash flow and net worth. We look at how these financial components might be impacted in the future by conditions such as inflation, appreciation, earnings potential and tax consequences.
Example:
During divorce proceedings most wives express a desire to keep the house, especially if children are involved. Family memories are generally strong and very difficult to let go of in this tumultuous time. A parent may also feel that removing the family from the home might prove to be too emotionally overwhelming for the children. Parents may wish to hold on to the house until the children start college, for example. In exchange for the house, the wife may have to shift assets such as retirement accounts or more liquid investments such as stocks and mutual funds to her husband to buy him out of his equity. While her net worth might appear quite strong because of the house, will she have enough liquidity to pay her mortgage, put food on the table and save for her retirement? Can we find a way to minimize any negative financial issues in order to achieve a goal? What other solutions might there be?
I work with individual clients or divorcing couples by gathering verbal and written information about their current financial situation and well as finding out what their concerns, goals and intentions are. Working as a team we create various settlement scenarios to explore and consider. The reports I generate will show how each of your proposed scenarios might affect each person’s finances in the months and years to come. These evaluations are invaluable in helping you make informed decisions on which settlement scenario might be in your family’s best interest to agree to.
Although not all situations may call for such scenarios to be generated, my work may also entail helping to identify actual expenses, educate one or both parties about how to think about their assets and debts, creating a spending plan for children, determining how to address income sharing before an agreement is reached and a number of other financial issues and questions.
