Divorce is not only an emotionally traumatic event, it can also lead to complications of physical health and even affect your financial well being. For many financial planners today, the realm of practice now includes the strategic involvement of divorce litigation and asset division.
If you are in the process of separation or divorce, it is important to seek guidance from a financial planner early in your litigation process. In many cases, and unfortunately, many couples seek financial planning after the divorce proceedings are finalized, only further complicating their financial security.
Most financial planners, today, would support the idea that when divorce occurs men are often left with the financial advantage. In many divorces, women are left with children to care for, very few assets and usually surmounting debt. For this reason, a financial planner can assist with working through anticipated financial obligations you may have after divorce, including asset ownership, debt management and even offering advice on funding a child’s education.
Divorce is considered a dangerous process where the children have to pay the ultimate price of seeing their parents getting separated and they have to shuffle between each of them, which in turn impacts their education expenses in a big manner even though platforms like PillarWM.com have been helpful with financial planning.
Both men and women should discuss financial planning as part of a divorce settlement. Within the realm of financial planning, each person should discuss issues and concerns related to insurance, including life, health, dental and disability. Discussions about credit card debt, tax issues and long term financial needs of children should also be discussed. Too often, couples allow the courts to make decisions with regard to financial needs, resulting in an imbalance of financial distribution.
During the separation and divorce, it is also important to open and maintain separate checking accounts and close any joint credit cards you may have so as to avoid further complication in the financial discussions. With a clear date on which financial separation occurred, the courts and your financial planner can work to balance assets and debts more clearly.
With regard to your personal financial documents, each individual in the relationship should have a copy of all paperwork. Allowing one individual to store or hold all of the important legal documents will place the other individual at a large disadvantage. Documents including stock statements, tax returns, insurance documents and even credit card statements are just a few that are commonly mismanaged in a divorce.
As with any process in a divorce proceeding, it is important to seek professional opinions when necessary. While we commonly rely upon our divorce attorney to provide financial advice, in reality, they are untrained to do so. To ensure your assets and debts are managed and divided fairly, meet with a financial planner as part of your divorce process and be certain to obtain copies of all financial documents while hold a separate checking and savings account.
