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No divorce is ever “easy”, but divorce from an addict can have its unique set of challenges. [Read more…]
Boomers: In your next relationship just shack up
It used to be called living in sin. It is now socially acceptable and growing by leaps and bounds among boomers. Shacking up is a popular alternative to marriage and divorce, even a nice collaborative divorce. Older people are living together for an average of nine years. Financial reasons top the list of incentives.
Loss of Income. Alimony usually stops when the recipient marries. If you have survivor’s pension benefits, you might lose those if you remarry. If you are receiving a share of your late or former spouse’s Social Security benefits, you could lose those benefits if you remarry before your 60th birthday. If you remarry after age 60 (age 50 if you are disabled), you can collect benefits on your former spouse’s record.
Potential Financial Burdens. In Texas, both spouses are on the hook for most debts incurred during the marriage, regardless of who incurred the debt. Then there is the cost of nursing homes at $5,000 a month in the Bryan College Station area. As a married couple, such costs can devastate the surviving spouse’s financial security.
Tax Disincentives. If each of you has income, as a married couple you could be thrown into a higher tax bracket. As singles living together, you each get $3,000 of capital losses to offset ordinary income, which results in an offset of $6,000 over the two tax returns. As a married couple filing with a joint tax return, you two would only get $3,000 to offset.
Estate Planning Risks. Protecting their children’s inheritance is a big reason Baby Boomers opt to cohabitate. Assure yourself and your heirs that their inheritance will remain intact. Visit with an estate planning attorney before you move in together. Contact me if you need a recommendation for an excellent estate planning attorney in the Brazos Valley.
In my next blog, I’ll give you tips for what to do and what not to do when shacking up. Do’s and Don’ts for Boomers Living in Sin
Divorce is Divorce except when…
One of the most frequent questions I am asked by College Station clients is about the difference between Collaborative Law divorce, litigation (going to court) and mediation or informal settlement.
My clients ask this question when they are consumed with fear and negative emotions at the start of their divorce process. Often they don’t trust their spouses to be rational and reasonable. They are fearful that they will lose what financial security they may have and face poverty in the near future. They cannot believe that litigation is as expensive as they are warned because they have never experienced it and cannot imagine what it is like. Likewise, they do not know what to expect of mediation. They usually think mediation is a process separate and apart from litigation. In fact, mediation is an event within the traditional litigation process. Mediation can also be used to settle tough disputes inside a Collaborative Law case.
My good friend and colleague, Camille Milner, has beautifully explained the differences in her blog. She talks about Collaborative Law, mediation, traditional litigation (the courtroom style) and settlement conferences. Please hop on over to her site, Milner-Law.com, and read about it for yourself.
How divorce after 50 may affect retirement
Fact: 30% of divorced women over the age of 62 who are still single live at or below the poverty line, according to research by Susan Brown, a professor at Bowling Green State University who has chronicled “gray divorce” throughout the years.
If we were to compare that to married couples in the same age demographic, only 4% live at or under the poverty line.
I just did a piece for the Chicago Tribune and Janet Kidd Stewart on divorce and retirement benefits – and why I think collaborative divorce may be the single best decision divorcing couples over 50 can make. Aside from the fact that collaborative keeps your divorce civil, respectful and private, the process also works to address your immediate and long-term financial needs (including those retirement years). [Read more…]
How much will this divorce cost?
I hear questions from people who come to me for divorce financial advice. No matter whether we are talking about College Station or Houston, the answer is always “it depends.”
It depends upon which divorce process you choose. Do it yourself, litigation, mediation or collaborative. Even the do it yourself can be expensive if you are not fully aware of the complexities of your financial situation. Don’t be like most people. Don’t assume your situation is simple.
It depends upon how cooperative you and your spouse are going to be with each other. Will you compromise quickly? Will you fight over the vacation souvenirs? (Yes, I saw that happen.)
It depends upon whether you are counting the future hidden costs of incomplete information. Don’t be focused only on the present. Look ahead at the possible financial gotchas that will bite you if you shortcut your divorce. Hire competent professionals: attorney, divorce CPA and child specialist.
It depends upon whether you hire the cheapest or the most expensive attorney. Don’t do either. Hire an attorney with average hourly rates. Ask other professionals for recommendations. Your friends and colleagues will give you names, but that doesn’t mean their favorite is the right fit for you.
It depends upon how organized you are. The more organized, the more you can save on fees.
New York Times Divorce Tips
The rich and famous are seeing the benefits of out-of-court divorce settlement. They have the money to slog it out in court, but in the past few years, more of them choose not to do so. Last Saturday in a New York Times article, columnist Paul Sullivan delved into the lessons we can learn from such famous divorcing couples as Rupert and Wendi Murdoch.
Mr. Sullivan interviewed me on dividing up assets in divorce. Specifically he wanted to know the best and worst ways people go about sorting out the money part of a divorce. He notes in his column there are four areas to be considered in a divorce: agreements, assets, children and fees. All these points apply not just to the rich and famous, but also to normal people like you and me. Near the end of the article, Sullivan quotes me on the advantages of collaborative law divorce in out-of-court settlements.
Why Collaborative Law Divorces Save You Time, Money and Hassle
The collaborative law divorce process is the preferred process of educated couples seeking divorce. Like you, they want to save time, money and hassle. These couples like the benefit of being able to make decisions with the help of experienced collaborative professionals. These couples like being in control.
Collaborative couples don’t have to wait for lawyer responses or court dates. They can wind up their divorce at their own pace. When they have obligations in their “real” lives, they can schedule team meetings around those events. Their professional team works around the couple’s schedules instead of the court dictating their schedules.
Most collaborative alumni tell me they are now communicating better than when they were married. This is because they selected a Mental Health Professional for their team who taught them how to effectively communicate as co-parents.
Collaborative couples select a single neutral CPA who understands their financial situation. The neutral financial professional analyzes the finances to maximize how the redesigned family will cover the children’s expenses and spousal support. The collaboratively trained CPA helps the couple decide how to stretch their limited funds to benefit the entire family.
If you would like to learn more about collaborative law divorce options in Bryan/College Station, just let me know.
Divorce: Watching Out for Your Financial Future
Bryan/College Station couples in divorce who stay out of court can get ahead financially by choosing the collaborative law divorce process. Unlike all the other divorce processes, collaborative law divorce provides a neutral financial advisor who has particular experience in helping couples move from we to me. You can save divorce costs and have a new financial plan that gets you going in your new life.
Divorce is one of the most stressful transitions you can face. Most individuals just want out, no matter what the cost. Unfortunately, without divorce financial advice, the cost can be very steep indeed. It can include decades of fighting in court and difficultly making ends meet. The usual financial planning structure does not work in divorce.
Your financial considerations hinge on the fact that you are moving from a couple to a couple of individuals. You and your spouse may have always differed in your financial planning opinions, but you had to compromise in some way during your marriage. After the divorce, each of you can make your own choices. This transition in planning is unique to divorce.
In a Bryan/College Station collaborative law divorce, you work with a team of experts trained by the Collaborative Law Institute of Texas. This includes attorneys for both sides, a neutral CPA/financial planner and a neutral divorce coach/child specialist. The neutral CPA develops a plan for splitting your property and is prohibited from taking either of you as a client after the divorce.
In mediation, you usually only have your attorney to advise you, missing the financial expertise of the collaborative law process. If a financial planner is engaged for a mediated divorce, that person can accept either party as a client after the divorce. This is a financial risk to you if your spouse promises to be a paying client after the divorce. Only the collaborative process ensures the protections of a truly neutral financial advisor.
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.
How to Keep Control of Your Divorce Costs
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.
Four Ways to Keep Costs Down in Your Collaborative Law Divorce
Even divorcing couples with wealth don’t want to waste it on an inefficient divorce. This is why the smarter Bryan/College Station couples that are talking about divorce are choosing collaborative law divorce. The collaborative law process offers couples privacy, control and methods to keep the total cost down.
The first step in saving money during a collaborative law divorce is to hire professionals trained by the Collaborative Law Institute of Texas. The Institute teaches how to be efficient from start to finish. I have been on cases with attorneys who had not been trained by the Institute. The result was a slow, mishandled and expensive experience for the couple. Be very careful to hire a collaboratively trained attorney. Ask about the training when you interview lawyers.
The second step is to pay attention in meetings and do what you have committed to doing. You will not be asked to do anything you cannot do. The collaborative case will go at the pace to which you agree. If you have a work deadline or family event, the case will slow down while you take care of these. But once you have committed to providing information for the case and a meeting has been scheduled to review that information, if you procrastinate and don’t finish your homework on time, the cost goes up a bit. When meetings have to be rescheduled, it costs money to check calendars, discuss alternative dates and process emails that communicate the rescheduling options and agreements.
The third step is to make your divorce a priority. If you can do this, the process will go faster and more efficiently. Ask to see the meeting agenda a few days ahead. Show up for all the meetings on time and prepared. Provide information when you say you will – try not to be late. Follow up to be sure your information was received.
In my experience, collaborative law divorce is usually significantly quicker and less expensive than traditional litigated divorce. You can reap even more savings when you follow these three steps during your collaborative law divorce.
I have worked on about 100 collaborative law divorces. If you would like my advice on which attorneys to interview, feel free to contact me at stewart@texasdivorcecpa.com.
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