Divorce costs can spiral out of control if you don’t keep track of them. There are two easy steps to keeping control of your divorce costs. Whether you live in Bryan/College Station or Houston, these steps will work for you.

In a collaborative law divorce case, you will know at all times what your combined expenses are. It is part of the transparency of the collaborative process. Unfortunately, that is not the situation with traditional litigated cases. Finding out what your spouse’s expenses have been and will be is a challenging task in a litigated case.

The first step in controlling your divorce costs is to choose the collaborative law divorce process. Spending money on such items as valuing the real estate or the family business is a decision discussed in meetings. The issues regarding whether and how to incur costs are openly discussed in joint meetings with attorneys and the neutral CPA until both spouses understand the pros and cons and come to a mutual agreement.

The best way to control costs is to continually see what they are. The smartest collaborative divorce couples with whom I have worked were the ones who opened a new checking account just to pay the divorce bills. They moved money into this new account and then tracked what they were spending via the new account. If they paid for a divorce bill with a credit card, they paid that one credit card charge from the new account. All costs were shown in this account. These couples knew exactly how much they were spending on their divorce and were able to ratchet the costs down when desired.

I have worked on about 100 collaborative law divorces. If you would like my advice on which collaborative law attorneys to interview, feel free to contact me at stewart@texasdivorcecpa.com.