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What are your best tips for how to financially survive divorce?
We haven't done a Money Milestone series in a while, in part because I've been a bit trepidatious about this one. I keep reading that divorce can decimate your finances, and there are numerous things you should do in advance of, during, and after a divorce.
However: I'm happily married (knock on wood). I still think this is important for us to talk about here, both for readers who may be thinking about a divorce or going through one. So let's do this as an open thread (anonymous as always) — ladies who've been divorced (or seriously investigated getting one), please speak up.
What are your best tips for financially surviving a divorce? What would you do differently with your finances during the marriage, if anything — and when would you have done it? What other tips do you have on divorce finances? What resources can you recommend, either on the finances side or otherwise?
We should probably mention here that we've also shared a divorce lawyer's tips on what to know before you do anything, as well as tips on changing your professional name after divorce.
In this Money Milestone series, we've done grad school, weddings, home buying, and planning for a baby. In terms of money and relationships, in the past we've also talked about pre-nups, shared accounts, married money management, dating someone with less money, dating a fellow busy overachiever, and more.
How to Financially Survive Divorce: Readers' Tips
Update: You can read all the advice from the readers who've financially survived divorce in the comments below, but some of their top tips for divorce finances and more include:
- don't put your anger into emails (and save everything your partner sends to you, including screenshots of text messages)
- find a lawyer right away, don't wait — they help you evaluate what's fair under the law, even if you have guilt about being the one ending the marriage
- understand the difference between a lawyer who fights (such as with a contested divorce) versus one who administrates (such as in an amicable divorce)
- see if your company has a legal plan that entitles you to any free legal service
- investigate state laws regarding community property, separate property, commingled assets, and spousal support, and see if you can find an example of your state's “Marital Dissolution Agreement”
- open an account only in your name right away
- make copies of all important paperwork (such as pension statements and the taxes for several previous years) ahead of time
- consider relinquishing rights to each other's retirement funds (particularly if you have more!)
- Do not sign away your rights to real property unless you are released from the mortgage — and even if the court orders him to pay the mortgage that’s in both your names, you are still legally obligated to the lender unless and until the loan is refinanced.
- ponder how “joint” any credit card debt was — did you accrue debt because he wasn't employed?
You may also want to check out this money snapshot from a divorced NYC lawyer about how divorces affected her finances — and what her net worth looked like afterwards.
Further reading:
- The Twelve Financial Pitfalls of Divorce [WIFE.org]
- How to Get Your Finances In Order Before a Divorce [US News]
- Fifteen Critical Financial Mistakes in Divorce [Association of Divorce Financial Planners]
- What Smart Women Do After Divorce [Huffington Post]
- Three Part Series: Is a Break Within Your Means?, Find Your Joint Assets, Dividing Property and Debts [Daily Worth]
- 6 Top Divorce Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs [Learnvest]
- 6 Reasons NOT to Fight for the Money You're Owed in the Divorce [Wealthy Single Mommy]
- Respectable Sources of Money in an Emergency – Like Divorce [Wealthy Single Mommy]
Social media images via Stencil. Originally pictured: Fossil ‘Sydney' Zip Phone Wallet, available at Nordstrom in 8 colors for $55.
anonymous
I’m starting to tackle this process now. Since husband is not living with us I am happy that I have access to / copies of all important paperwork. I have always taken care of the finances, so I’m a step ahead, but I also made sure to copy his pension statements etc. (state worker).
NOLA
Financially, mine was pretty amicable. We came to a fairly quick agreement about how we would handle the finances as we separated (no children, though). He was living with a friend but still using our house to store his stuff and to work on the computer. He had been unemployed, but then had money coming in, so I got him to agree to pay for a portion of the rent and utilities. I bought myself a laptop and let him have full use of the other computer. We closed our storage unit and moved everything to the house before his move to avoid that continued cost. I opened a checking account on my own and transferred money from our joint account to my account as we agreed on expense sharing. He didn’t open his own account until after he moved out of state. We closed the joint account when he moved. He also reimbursed me for his orthodontics expenses that were coming out of my paycheck as FSA. I had 15 or more years of retirement savings and he had a little here and there, but we agreed to relinquish rights to each other’s retirement (VERY IMPORTANT!!). I also (through the use of guilt in terms of how he treated me in the split) convinced him to pay off the credit card debt I had accrued during our marriage (I had none when we got married) because he was inconsistently employed and had a lot of debt. That last one was an agreement outside of our divorce agreement. He tried to bargain. I held firm. It allowed me to walk away from the divorce in much better shape financially than I had been while married. What I would have done differently – I would not have allowed him to handle the bills. We did not have the same sense of financial responsibility.
anonymous
This is very helpful to me. As of right now I have much more saved for retirement, but since he’s a state employee (and most likely will be for the remainder of his career), I wonder if it would be wise to relinquish rights to each others retirement. We also have debt from his periods of unemployment for which I feel he is responsible.
Did you both have separate lawyers? I am still unsure on how I want to handle this since most of our situation is already decided.
M
Get a lawyer, have them get the public pension valued. It’s easier to compare and see if the two are comparable in value to determine whether it’s fair to relinquish rights, in my opinion.
Anonymous
State employee pensions can sometimes be a sizeable benefit. There should be information available through the agency’s HR website if you have a recent statement.
been thru it
Yikes, yes, get a lawyer. You need one to represent your interests and who can move through the process correctly. I am a lawyer who had a family law specialist representing me during my divorce.
Anonymous
The one thing I’ve noticed is that my women friends that have gone through divorces seem to wait on finding a lawyer. They avoid it, even if they were the ones that moved out, thinking that they can just agree on custody and splitting the assets without any acrimony.
I have yet to see any of them go through a divorce without some regret on waiting to find a lawyer that supports their interests, or without giving up more money than they originally intended.
Protect yourselves ladies!
anonymous
This is the situation I’m in now. Custody is a given because of his periods of extreme mental instability. Our home is at a break even point and we used my money for the down payment so he will be signing the property over to me. We do not have any assets besides retirement. I want to believe that we can handle everything, but I also know I have to realize that my future will be dictated by the divorce decree. Is investing in a lawyer (when I don’t even have the money for one available)worth it?
Anonymous
Obviously yes. He’s mentally unstable. You must do this right.
anonymous
thank you. I need a voice of reason every now and then.
anonymous
You absolutely need a lawyer given his mental instability. You can wait around thinking you have an agreement and he can pull the rug out from under you, whether intentionally or not.
Anon
I’m in the process of drawing up divorce papers, and I’ve found that a divorce lawyer for a fairly cooperative split isn’t that expensive – an hour for the first meeting, half an hour here or there as they help you come up with solutions to financial and custody issues or review the financial splits. They’ll get expensive if you need to go to court or have lots of lingering disagreements after the split, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the costs are manageable so far. I would budget for 5-6 hours of attorney time, at whatever the attorney’s billable rate is.
Anonymous
Some things that helped me financially in divorce:
– Before I told him that I was leaving, I gathered all financial/personal paperwork, including a copy of taxes for the past three years.
– Having accounts in only my name. This allowed me to transfer utility/rent money into our joint account as necessary. I did not touch anything in our joint accounts.
– I was part of my company’s legal plan. I ended up getting 15 hours of legal service out of it. It did not cover everything in my contested divorce, but it helped.
I also made choices for my emotional health but not for financial benefit… I agreed to pay spousal support at a higher amount than I would have preferred just to move forward and avoid going to court. In the end, it was the right call because I locked him in at a value that can not be altered even if he becomes unemployed. Which happened…
Anonymous
I brought a lot of assets to my marriage. It lasted a long time. The financial side got very complicated when we divorced – basically, I think everyone ought to go right now and see what the laws say about community property, separate property, commingled assets, spousal support, etc. , in your state. You should do this even if you’re happily married. If I had understood what the law says about assets in a marriage I think I would have acted differently. And probably would have also felt different about my rights in the marriage.
Must be Tuesday
“I think everyone ought to go right now and see what the laws say about community property, separate property, commingled assets, spousal support, etc. , in your state.”
+1000
Lyssa
I’ve always said that I think that the state should publish some sort of simplified pamphlet that roughly explains this to hand out with every marriage license (and it should include not just divorce, but also death issues – at least one of you is going to face of one these eventually). People should be informed about what they’re getting into.
S in Chicago
+1 I really wish that was out there. I have a prenup, and I was surprised by a lot of how the law works when we were developing it together. I can’t even imagine having to navigate so much of that when life becomes more complicated with more assets, kids, etc. and a time when the couple is no longer functioning well as a team. I also feel bad that my dad has a terminal illness and so much of both of their stress has been trying to figure out how benefits will work and potential financial impact on my mom from decisions they’re making. Just a whole lot for your average person with no legal background to muddle through. And I know we all are fortunate in that I’m educated, Mom and Dad are still both mentally in great shape, etc.
Lake
+1. I did a lot of things before I got married and during the marriage to make sure that if divorce did happen, it would be a straightforward split. My husband has always criticized me for this thinking it showed a lack of commitment, but whenever I hear the horror stories, I’m so glad I’ve stood firm. So here are some of the things I did: (1) did not take his last name; divorce is a personal and painful process that does not need to be advertised to the world and invite inquiry when your last name suddenly changes; plus changing back to your maiden name just gives you a greater burden in the paperwork of untangling your lives; (2) did not let him put his name on the title of my new car purchased during the marriage; (3) he paid for the house so only his name is on the deed; I contributed some to the mortgage but no more than I would be paying in rent if I lived alone so happy to relinquish any claim to the house; (4) we have no joint financial or retirement account; I would not take on the penalties of trying to divide a retirement account; we are each others POD beneficiary; when it comes to dividing cost of expenses I totaled up our regular bills, analyzed our average monthly spend on T&E and give him half of that amount automatically every month; we take turns on big ticket items (new furniture; taxes). Maybe he will try to come after my income since I changed to a higher income career during our marriage but he has saved more in retirement; so he knows that if he gets greedy it will only hurt him in the long term.
soaps
I’m not sure if I have advice, but I know I have regrets about how I handled it.
I felt guilty because I was the one leaving him, so I didn’t fight very hard to divide up our assets or (more importantly) debt. I let him keep the boat, 2 of the 3 cars, the dog and I kept the credit card debt. I had very little credit card debt going into the marriage, and it just snowballed because he decided he wanted to move back forth between the east and west coast, and quit his job to go back to school. He also had a very different sense of financial responsibility than I did, which is why I would end up paying for bills on time even if I had to use my credit cards. Knowing he wasn’t as responsible, I also did not have very many shared accounts with him, so I’m thankful for that.
I eventually got my dog back but I wish I got my share of the boat and that he was shouldering some of the debt. So my main point is, don’t let emotions get in the way of protecting yourself and your future self!(easier said than done, of course)
Rosie
I’m a divorce lawyer, and this is exactly why it’s important to get a lawyer early in the process. We help you get what you deserve and what you have a right to, not what you want to only take because of your own guilt. The role of a divorce lawyer is often to be a third-party assessing the situation and evaluating what’s fair under the law, not what you feel bad about.
Blonde Lawyer
And the client still has control. If after all of our advice you still insist on taking a bad settlement, we can’t stop you from taking it. At least you know you had choices though.
cbackson
I came out of my divorce with a very fair settlement, but I wouldn’t have gotten it if I hadn’t pushed for it. I think the key, at least when it comes to the negotiation stage, is to try to think through, as dispassionately as possible, what you actually need for your financial health. For example, I knew I would have a lot of short-term costs, and so I pushed to be allocated essentially all of our liquid assets (which I got). I went through all of our bills and account records immediately to identify anything I thought should be his responsibility and should affect the allocation of assets (a personal loan we’d made to one of his friends went with him; he compensated me for the fact that he hadn’t been paying bills on time and the gas company had pulled a large deposit, etc.).
The biggest advice I’d give, honestly, is to play an active role in financial management throughout your marriage. Far too many women let men handle everything from bill payment to retirement savings decisions – if you aren’t involved in that, then you’ll be utterly clueless if you’re ever on your own (whether due to divorce, death, or disability). Plus, I think that it can breed a bad dynamic in marriages to have “the money stuff” all be one person’s job.
Anonymous
When you look for a lawyer, think about the person you are hiring, and do you want someone who fights or someone who administrates. Marital Separation Agreements are mostly just a formula that they plug you into, but there are some gray areas that will depend on who is your lawyer. Another thing is that divorce lawyers all know each other. A lot of them don’t like to get in bad with each other, and those kinds of lawyers are OK at the administrating part of divorce but they are terrible at fighting. If your divorce is complicated or hostile at all you should really find someone who looks at the process as a litigation matter, not a civil matter, and won’t mind making their colleages in the profession mad if they need to.
Must be Tuesday
As a former divorce attorney (and divorced person myself), my perspective is a bit different. I would say that there are negotiators and litigators. Some divorce attorneys are really good at one, but not the other. You want someone who’s good at both.
Most divorces are settled by agreement (even if bitter and protracted) rather than by trial, so you want someone who is a good negotiator and who can tell you from the outset what is reasonable to settle for in your personal circumstance. You also need a good litigator because you can’t count on your spouse (or their attorney) to be reasonable, so you also need an attorney who is capable of litigating should it come to that, who knows when you are likely to get more by litigating rather than settling, and more importantly, someone who isn’t so afraid of litigating that they advise you to settle for less than you might get in court just because the attorney is nervous about arguing a motion or trying a case.
By choosing an attorney who is a fighter first and foremost, you’re hiring someone who is almost guaranteed to make your divorce longer and more expensive because they will jump straight to litigating without a serious try at negotiating a settlement that you can live with. Also, most of the attorneys that I encountered who presented themselves as fighters were not generally the best at negotiating because they tended to skip that part, and they weren’t usually the best litigators either. They were first and foremost fighters, who impressed potential clients with their passionate rhetoric and enthusiasm for litigation, but were not the most effective in the conference room or court room. Like all generalizations, there are exceptions, but this was largely my experience.
Lex
Agreed! I do family law now in Illinois and you do need someone willing to fight because who knows how crazy the other party’s lawyer will be BUT it is almost always better to settle and have an agreed order for custody and the finances.
Rosie
Agreed +2. Another divorce lawyer here. You may think you want a bulldog, but a long, drawn-out fight over finances really just uses all that money to pay the lawyers.
And if you’re fighting over the kids, a scorched earth approach is never good for the kids long-term. The studies have shown that divorce itself has no adverse impact on children, but contentious/fighting parents do.
Good attorneys will litigate the issues that actually warrant it, and help you figure out how to settle the rest of the issues in the way that is best for your children.
Lyssa
One starting point I would recommend is to look up examples of your state’s “Marital Dissolution Agreement.” (Also, parenting plans, if applicable.) This is a form (it may go by other names depending on the state) that can be filled in and adjusted to use for an agreed divorce, and there should be examples all over on the web (some may be of questionable authority, but still offer some guidance). Even if you’re not a lawyer, you can still go through and get an idea of what settlements have to cover and see where you are likely to have sticking points.
Anon
Sorry if this is too much of a tangent.
Has anyone divorced after a pre-nup and wished they had divided things differently in it, or didn’t have one at all? Decided against a pre-nup and wished they had one later when divorcing? SO and I are discussing marriage and while we’re both pro-planning for the possibility of divorce now while things are obviously amicable, we’re both very early in our careers and not sure how to gauge future earnings, etc. We see the benefits, but are also hesitant to bind ourselves now to terms that later just don’t fit the reality of our situation.
Rosie
Talk to a lawyer in your own state about what your plans are and whether a pre-nup is actually appropriate in your situation. It might not be, and the lawyer might have some other great advice about planning for marriage.
Same
+1. Same situation with my fiance; just a few years out of grad school, neither one of us is certain where our careers will go, who will be the breadwinner and who’ll be the primary caregiver to future children, and how parenthood will change our perceptions. I’m hoping that the document wouldn’t be one we’d have to revisit and amend — are these generally one-and-dones?
Anonymous
Why would you do a prenup? They’re for people with assets and/or children. They’re not a panacea for all divorce woes
Anon (OP)
Anonymous, we recognize that. Not sure of Same’s situation, but for us, it’s something we’ve discussed as I have significantly more assets, and he has significantly more student loan debt. We’re researching the laws of our state in regards to division of premarital assets and future inheritances, which are known quantities now, but aren’t sure whether we’d want any agreement to also address other aspects as well–for example spousal support–given that we have no idea who will wind up being the higher earner in the long run, and by how much. I was hoping to hear from someone whose situation changed (either for better or worse) after signing a pre-nup discussing those future aspects, and was either thankful for or regretted the guidelines set out in the pre-nup.
Thanks, Rosie–is this a situation where we could go see one attorney together to get advice and start making decisions, or since we may wind up going the pre-nup route, we should go separately?
Senior Attorney
I decided against a pre-nup and bitterly regretted it. I was the high earner and if I had it to do over again I’d definitely have contracted out of spousal support and made it clear that my house would remain my house, among other things.
I think in your case I agree with Rosie — talk to a lawyer about what you want to accomplish and go from there.
Anonymous
My sister just married with her now-husband. He was paranoid if they divorced. He is ten years senior to her.
One thing that changed his perspective was remembering that his stepmother is caring for his aging Dad AND our Dad, who is divorced and alone, had a serious health setback, to the point where we needed to get him on Medicaid (no long term care insurance for good reasons) and we had a heart-to-heart that we didn’t want asset titling to mess up eligibility for care during sickness or sunset years.
Also, when it comes to assets – how much time in the marriage is committed to managing it? Are adult children working on the real estate and paying taxes, or will the spouse need to step in because of disability, or the kids moved to the west coast, have other commitments/family and aren’t available?
What will the pre-nup mean to the whole family when you’re happily married for 30+ years and a spouse dies? You get to define that.
This is food for thought. Protecting assets is one thing, but don’t kill happily-ever-after by thinking broadly about the future.
DifferentAnon
I’m in the middle of a divorce, and had looked into a prenup when we got married because I came to the marriage with positive assets (including a donwpayment for a house and a paid off car) while my husband came with student loan debt and credit card debt. We didn’t get a prenup because it would have been expensive relative to the value of the assets I wanted to protect. Now, I’m finding that the law in my state actually protected me with regard to those assets in the same way as the prenup I would have wanted, and that my life has changed in so many ways that we didn’t anticipate when we got married that a prenup would have been irrelevant. So in my situation, a prenup would not have been useful (fwiw, we had no kids and fairly uncomplicated assets at marriage – both W-2 wage earners, no significant investments outside of our retirement accounts, no major family inheritances expected).
Brit
Do not sign away your rights to real property unless you are released from the mortgage. Otherwise you will still be on the hook for the mortgage but without any interest in the property the mortgage is secured by.
When I left my ex, I was scared and stupid. At his insistence, I signed a quit claim deed for our condo – which he promised that he wouldn’t file until he had re-financed later that year (his brother was a mortgage broker and rates had gone down). He filed my quitclaim deed only 10 days later…and five years later I was still on the mortgage. This affected my own ability to get a mortgage – and thank god he didn’t fall into financial crisis during that period (he had family money).
He finally got my name off the mortgage about a year ago.
M
LISTEN TO THIS ADVICE. I have clients ALL the time who think they got their name off of the house when they “signed it over” without realizing that the home had not been refinanced and the debt was still in their name.
Senior Attorney
And also? The divorce court can only adjudicate the rights and obligations of the parties before it. That means that even if the court orders him to pay the mortgage that’s in both your names, you are still legally obligated to the lender unless and until the loan is refinanced. All the divorce judgment gets you is the right to chase your ex for whatever payments you make on the loan he was supposed to pay.
Anonymous
You have no idea what you’re doing. Stop trying to do it yourself and get help.
Gamazar
Thanks for putting this together. I think planning in the event of a divorce should be required BEFORE YOU MARRY. I’m not trying to put a dark cloud over anyone’s happy marriage (cos they ARE out there, I’m sure) but I think not enough women are educated enough about the FINANCIAL implications of marriage. I think we need to be realistic that marriage is a financial partnership (like sharing a business together), not (just) a declaration of love. Many marriages would be much happier if there were a better partnership in terms of money.
Walnut
My husband and I have largely structured our finances in a way that makes sense based on how we would divy up in the event of a split, however, I have not done much research into what my state has to say about marital property. I was floored when my husband had to sign off on the recent sale of MY house, even though he had literally nothing to do with it.
It really makes me wonder how much control we would have to say, “We each keep our cars, we keep our retirement accounts, we sell the house and split the proceeds down the middle.” I don’t even want to think about what happens when inheritance of assets come into the picture. We have both agreed that we don’t think inheritances should become marital assets, but what do we need to do to actually make certain that what we agreed on in the good times is what is carried out if things go south?
Anonymous
You need a post-nup.
Anonymous
Even if you are a lawyer, hire an experienced divorce lawyer to handle your divorce. You need someone who is detached from the situation. A doctor does not operate on herself; same principle.
I threw out the cheating ex, changed the locks, and had a lawyer within the same week. We had separate accounts, no children, so finances were not terribly difficult except for the house, in which we had significant equity. I could have blabbed to his employer about the cheating, but I kept my mouth shut to my significant financial advantage–keeping the house (and employer eventually found out anyway, which I expected). Although it is hard, sometimes you have to suppress the urge to get revenge in order to secure your financial future.
Anon
Whoa. Why would you say anything to his employer in the first place? All that would do is make you look like 10 kinds of crazy. I don’t think any decent employer would want to know or even care about the romantic exploits of employees so long as they aren’t both employed by the organization/it’s impacting the work environment in some other way. I abhor cheating. But what someone chooses to do in his or her bedroom should have no bearing on occupational skill/performance. I don’t get this line of thought at all.
Anonymous
For military fraternization and adultery (in some circumstances) are punishable.
Anonymous
He was a professor and she was a student.
Anonymous
He was a professor and she was one of his students.
Anonymous
Sorry for the multiple posts.
Anon
Ah! Definitely changes things. That must have been so tough to stay quiet on.
(The military was an angle I wouldn’t have thought of, too!)
coffeecake
Genuinely curious – how would telling his employer affected anything?
anon
Watch what you put in email or text. I’m doing a doc review right now pursuant to a subpoena (client is a third party) that is related to a divorce proceeding. I am seeing some really ugly emails. These emails sent in the heat of anger are really going to look bad when used as evidence in court. Resist.
And the converse: keep everything that your spouse puts in email or text. Screenshot your texts (most phone companies don’t keep text messages very long) to PDF, PDF all the emails, organize everything by date.
Anonymous
Best advice I ever heard: you are negotiating a contract. Get the emotion out of it — as hard as that may be.
Silkjamer
Make a copy of all important paperwork and the last three months bank statements. You likely will never have access to this information again unless there is a subpoena involved.
Make an appointment to interview an attorney for basic advice. Make another appointment if the first one did not suit you. Decide what is really worth fighting for because the fight will cost you many times over what the object is worth as well as prolong the agony. I would have been much better off if I had just said okay to him keeping the items and me getting my share in cash (vs. cash and objects).
Have an agenda every time you visit your attorney, no, a real agenda. Stick to it. Do not take up your attorney’s time with anything other than a definite action item. Keep your money in your pocket and talk to your mom or a financial planner or anyone else about the ins and outs of what is in your best interest.
Do not sign anything you would not have signed were you staying together, tell him to give it to your attorney.
Oh, and when you move out, take everything that you want with you or the odds are you will not see the clay Christmas tree you made in kindergarten ever again. It is hard to know what will help get you through those first five years and which of those treasures you will be giving away after 10.
Consulting a divorce counselor can also assist with figuring out how to split all the hairs. And I agree with “Must be Tuesday”, it can be a crap shoot.
Senior Attorney
Oh, my. This is topic near and dear to my heart. Here are some tips off the top of my head:
1. Know the divorce laws in your state. Nobody ever plans to get divorced, but it does happen and it is only wise to know how your income and assets will be divided in case your marriage ends. If the default arrangement (i.e. community property in which all earnings belong to both parties 50/50) doesn’t suit you, then consider a prenup to put in place an arrangement that suits you better.
2. Be very careful about transmuting separate property into marital property. The stupidest thing I ever did (other than marrying the former Mr. Senior Attorney in the first place) was putting my husband on the title of my house. Again, know the laws in your state and protect yourself.
3. Think long and hard about the consequences of having you or your spouse stay home with the children. If you do it, you will impact your ability to earn a living for a long time, possibly forever. And spousal and child support are only worth what you can actually collect. On the flip side, if your spouse stays home you are setting yourself up for very large spousal and child support payments in the event of a divorce, plus you are putting yourself at a disadvantage with respect to custody if the other spouse can claim he was the primary caregiver. In the event of a divorce the former SAH parent is likely to get the kids and the house (on the working parent’s dime).
4. If you do decide to divorce, don’t leave the house unless you have no other alternative, because you are vanishingly unlikely to get it back once you leave. If you do leave, take every. single. thing. you want from the house with you because, again, you are vanishingly unlikely to be able to retrieve your belongings later.
5. More generally, once you decide to divorce, be smart and make a plan. Lawyer up. Gather documents. Most importantly, build your war chest so you have money to live on and to pay your lawyer. Listen to your lawyer, but also listen to your gut. You know your situation better than anybody and don’t let your lawyer or anybody else talk you into something that you know is wrong.
B
+1000 for #2 and #4. Those are mistakes I made.
One thing I did right – the morning I left, I closed down joint accounts in both our names (esp credit card). I was actually kind of amazed I was able to do this unilaterally, but it worked. We had separate accounts also, and so when he went wild with spending during the divorce period, he was clearly responsible for it and I didn’t get stuck wtih the bill.
Anon
I went the super cheap route when I divorced because my ex was having a severe bi-polar episode that lasted about a year and the divorce was precipitated by a fun little Tarasoff warning from the hospital. He didn’t want a divorce (ha), so he refused to pay for any of it, and I was in grad school, so wasn’t making much money myself. I just wanted to get it done and with as little expense as possible, but that led me to make some silly decisions. Example: I agreed to the child support amount he said he could pay despite it being below guideline. But my biggest mistake was agreeing to keep all the student loan debt we had accrued during the marriage, I should have split it. But I knew I would make more money than him for the indefinite future, and I just wanted him to sign. Sighhh… oh well, it’s only money.
Anonymous
If you are still talking, and both of you want it to be over, head for mediation, especially if there are no children involved. The mediator can help with impasse, instead of the couple reverting to old arguments, and make progress toward the final agreement. A good mediator will ask questions to check on “caving”. You’re still making the decisions.
We also have a community mediation center in most counties of my state. The process is longer, but you can save a lot on fees, and then provide a donation for services. This process works with people who are likely to follow up on what they agree to do. Some mental illnesses are a bad match for this set up, as well as abuse and power dynamics.
Anon
For me the whole thing was a nightmare, I did not see it coming and he planned ahead and I still years later can not believe what it did to me financially. I hate to sound cynical but i agree with all who say know the laws and prenups. I was pregnant and disabled, he decided it was time to do other things after 10 years and screwed me over big time. The lawyers were not much help. I’m a lawyer (different kind) and was surprised at how much they just wanted to administer norms. The mediator/arbitrator was terrible, did not read the documents, just split things the way he felt like it without looking at inequalities/emptying of accounts prior to date of separation. Nightmare. Misery. Over now, still rebuilding and will be for a long time.
Anonymous
“Administer norms” was exactly my experience at first. I changed lawyers.
Anon
I had a different experience with moving out/taking stuff. Because my ex worked from the house, and we had a child still in school, it made more sense for him to stay and me to go. Also I was traveling a lot for work. We kept joint ownership for a couple of years. It took that long for the financial settlement:(. In the end he couldn’t have afforded to buy me out of the house so I got it back. I live in a community property state. Maybe that made a difference?
OhAnon
I recently got a dissolution (finalized late last year) and I wish I’d done it sooner, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make ends meet once I did. My ex-husband makes slightly more than me, but our incomes combined made what most people would consider a decent salary for one person. I didn’t pay a lawyer initially, but found out later that my county’s magistrate is extremely strict and so I ended up paying for a lawyer in the end. My ex husband waived his right to council. I make ends meet now by having a roommate. I kept the house because the down payment came from me and because my husband can’t manage money well (lost his first house to foreclosure in his first divorce). Other than retirement accounts, there was nothing else joint that we owned or could claim ownership to.
VicT
Don’t only consult a lawyer, also consult a tax pro. Alimony, splitting retirement accounts, education funds…. all have tax ramifications of which an attorney is not always aware.
VicT
Having trouble posting my comment, so please forgive if it shows up multiple times…
Don’t only consult a lawyer, also consult a tax pro. Alimony, retirement accounts, education funding, etc… all have different tax ramifications. My attorney got my ex to pay his share of the joint credit card bills by putting it through as alimony (he had good intentions but was horrible about paying things on time!), but I got taxed on that as income and he got to deduct it. Luckily, I had been told that would happen so we built my tax rate into the payment.
Also, be cautious about tying child support to income. It can get very messy with requiring proof of income, etc.
Anonymous
Thoughts on using a mediate vs lawyer to save money?
Anonymous
I am a lawyer and married another lawyer when we were 28 and 29. At the time we got married, I was a Big Law associate and my husband was working at his family’s business. After 5 years, I had our daughter and became a SAHM. I let my husband take care of all of our finances. When we divorced after 12 years of marriage, I discovered that he had been leading a secret financial life for the prior 8 years. All of the equity in our home was gone, he had run up huge credit card debts that he was hiding from me (some on a joint credit cards), and he had run his family’s business into bankruptcy. There are three lessons from this I’d like to share:
1. Never, and I mean never, relinquish your own power over your money. You must know where all of your family’s money is, what is coming in and going out, what it is being spent on, and you must exercise your power over it. Don’t ignore it like I did. If there are red flags that you are seeing, you need to investigate until you are satisfied that you really understand what is going on.
2. Think twice about giving up a full time job to be a stay at home mom. I know that everyone is different, and that some people (me included) really enjoy being a SAHM. However, there are too many women in my neighborhood who are practically destitute now because they have been completely out of the workforce for 15+ years and their ex-husbands imploded in their 40s and stopped working (like my ex-husband has) to avoid paying child support/maintenance. If you stop working, at a minimum, keep up your professional contacts and consider doing some part-time work so that just in case — God forbid — you have to go back to work in a hurry, you will still be able to find an job and support yourself.
3. Financial disaster can also make you sick, in my opinion. 5 years after my divorce, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I feel strongly that the two were linked in my situation. By putting myself in a position in which I was completely panicked about my financial survival, I wound up worrying myself sick – literally.
Similarly, I currently have a friend who is divorced with three kids. Her husband cheated, then imploded and he is currently “unemployed” (although certainly working under the table). She is a SAHM with three kids, a big house, lots of bills and not enough income to keep things going. She recently had to be hospitalized for anxiety.
Please be smart and hope for the best, but plan for the worst. There are lots of smart, capable women on this site – if any of you can learn from my mistakes, it’s worth my sharing!