Your Own Financial Advisor
You and your spouse may have worked with a financial advisor to help plan and manage assets during your marriage. Now you need a financial advisor who can focus solely on you and your needs and plans — on a completely confidential basis. Your financial advisor can help you understand the assets you own and your liquidity and cash flow issues, as well as strategies for reaching long-term objectives such as educating a child or planning for retirement.
Your Own Personal Counselor
Divorce is a legal, financial and emotional process. You may have encountered issues that you are less than comfortable discussing with a financial or legal advisor. That’s where a therapist, clergyperson or other personal counselor can become invaluable, helping you deal with the complex, private and very human side of divorce. Going through a divorce can feel like a lonely process, which is all the more reason not to go it alone. Assembling a strong, experienced team of confidential professional and personal advisors — your personal board of directors — can provide critical guidance and support, helping you make more informed decisions while you approach the future with greater confidence. Consider building a team that includes: your own lawyer. Yes, it is possible to get through a divorce without a lawyer, but usually it’s not wise. Your lawyer takes on the responsibility of safeguarding your best interests and can deal objectively, unemotionally and forcefully with the many complex issues that typically arise. Plus, an experienced lawyer can offer you valuable perspective on the tough decisions you will have to make.
Information Is Power
When you have comprehensive, accurate information, your attorney can represent you more effectively, and you will be able to shape your own financial life more quickly. Try to assemble this information as early in the process as possible:
- Bank accounts
- Financial statements
- Tax returns for the prior three years
- Investment / brokerage accounts and mutual funds
- Retirement (IRA, 401(k), etc.) and pension plans (both yours and your former spouse’s)
- Social Security benefits statements
- Employee benefits coverage (health, dental, short-term disability and long-term disability for you and your former spouse)
- Military benefits
- Credit card statements
- Mortgage statements (including first and second mortgages and home equity credit)
- Car, boat and other loans
- Loans you or your spouse may have guaranteed
- Pending loan applications
- Lease agreements
- Purchase and sale agreements
- Employment agreements
- Partnership agreements
- Estate planning documents
- Will
- Living will
- Powers of attorney
- Trust documents (for trusts established by you or your spouse, and for trusts of which you are a beneficiary)
- Durable medical powers of attorney
- Insurance coverage
- Life insurance
- Homeowner’s insurance
- Umbrella liability
- Car insurance
- Long-term care insurance
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