Should I heed the divorce-finances advice of family and friends who aren’t as affluent as me?
This is a touchy topic. As you face the prospect of divorce, your friends and family will all weigh in with advice in their attempts to help you.
But weigh this into your assessment of that advice: Are they coming from the same financial circumstances as you are?
If you’ve been living an affluent lifestyle and they haven’t, this isn’t about being a snob or looking down your nose on others. It’s really more an apples-vs.-oranges scenario. Many of the rules that apply to them won’t apply to you, and vice versa.
My job: Help you craft the best settlement for you. I’m certainly qualified to do so:
I’m a CPA, a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER® professional, and a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® professional. In other words, a divorce financial expert who offers divorce financial strategies, with tons of experience.
Different circumstances, different considerations
Example: At your level, there’s a completely different conversation that would happen, regarding your actual monthly expenses, and what would be required to support you without a drastic change of lifestyle. (More on that in a second.)
And then there’s the question of mediation vs. a court trial. Of course everyone (even your husband) will prefer mediation vs. that court of last resort: a courtroom. But it’s the psychological—and financial—dynamics surrounding that choice which will be different to you, considering the lifestyle you’ve been living.
Let me get real concrete here. For many of my affluent divorcing-women clients, they surrendered, long ago, their income-earning potential, in order to support their husbands and raise a family. And that’s laudable.
But in a courtroom, it’s disastrous. You want to go to mediation instead, because, there, you’ll have the opportunity to craft a settlement that makes sense for your life vs. the dumb Arizona court guidelines for things like spousal maintenance and child support.
Yes, I said “dumb.” I don’t use words like that lightly.
Don’t settle for (tons) less
Regardless of the lifestyle you’ve been living, a court in Arizona will impute a post-divorce income to you of about $36,000 a year. Yep: Minimum wage. They will assume that that will be your new “income-earning ability.” And regardless of how much your husband continues to earn—and it could be in the millions—a judge in Arizona won’t let you get more than $120,000 a year. That’s because that’s what the judge earns. (Check out my other article which explains this.)
Thus, mediation. But you’ll hear threats—believe me, you will, and these can come from friends, family, and even your own attorney—to the effect of: “Take that offer from your husband right now! If you don’t, you’ll end up in court, and things will be worse!”
And despite what I just told you about minimum wage and all that, when I hear a threat like that made to a client of mine like you, I call “B.S.” on it, every time.
Why?
If you take nothing else away from this article, let it be this:
The person with the most money has the most to lose in the courtroom.
So if you think you’re scared of ending up in court, trust me: Your affluent husband is downright terrified.
Let me help you. And let me help your attorney help you more than they would, or could, otherwise.
Contact me today, and let’s get you on a firm footing to a new and brighter path to your life.
