Anticipate Financial Issues to Improve Divorce Settlements
Every person pursuing a divorce should have clear goals for settlement. These goals should be shared and refined with both the attorney and the divorce financial analyst. Depending on your goals, you and your team will need to ask a number of questions to focus the settlement process on a number of issues. These issues may influence every aspect of your divorce from discovery to negotiations to settlement.
Example questions (issues) for consideration include:
- How could income, expenses, assets, debts, cash flow, and alimony be divided ‘equitably’?
- What about your situation could justify deviations to standard child support guidelines?
- How do you value and compare disparate assets?
- How can you represent your income and expenses defensibly when current finances are comingled?
- How can inconsistent past income and expenses be represented defensibly as “monthly” values?
- What tracing scheme best determines how much separate rights you have to each financial asset?
- How can you best determine and trade-off factors like asset value, growth, liquidity, and risk?
- What are the tax consequences of a proposed settlement or change in marital status?
- Can you afford and do you want the marital home?
- Is your spouse hiding assets or income?
As a bonus, consider three additional common issues:
- How would the proposed settlement change your cash flow and various household expenses?
- What are the settlement costs versus rewards trade offs for each point of contention?
- How much is the family business worth, and what income will it produce?
While these issues may be common, their remedies are bespoke to each case. To best remedy, a person should work with a diverse team of legal and financial experts.