Spending from One Bank Account During Divorce

When clients ask me for advice on divorce, one common question is “When should we stop using the same bank account?”

I have a lot of collaborative law divorce clients. These people are working together to have a private divorce that they control. During the divorce, they are commonly both using the household checking account for their living expenses.

If you have chosen a collaborative divorce and/or are able to communicate with each other, you can both keep using the joint checking account until you are divorced. Many of my clients go this route. They both have had access to the bank account activity. They choose a date just prior to the anticipated date of divorce. On that day, they print online account statements and “freeze” the balances for the purpose of division. The attorneys and other advisors hand over their final invoices prior to that date. Those invoices are paid from the joint account before the account balance is divided. This eliminates the need for the couple to reimburse each other for spill over divorce expenses.