Finances Resources

If you want to keep your house after your divorce, you are taking on a big financial challenge! If you are like most Americans, your mortgage represents your largest monthly expense, and now instead of splitting it between two incomes, you'll have to find a way to...

You have an emotional connection to your home, especially if you have lived there for many years and raised a family within its walls. If you are considering a later-life divorce, you likely won’t have to deal with the difficulty of child custody negotiations. Instead, ownership of the home might be the biggest question you face in your divorce negotiations.

When Amber walked down the aisle eight years ago, she thought she was going to spend the rest of her life with Marcus. After their second child came along four years ago, they decided that Amber should leave her job as a product manager to take care of the children full time while Marcus continued working as a sales manager. Life didn’t work out the way Amber had hoped. She and Marcus drifted apart.

Divorce can shake you to your very foundations. Everything changes, and many people want to cling to the house as the only stability they find in a shifting world. Whether keeping the house is your best option depends on many different factors. Here are what you need to consider in making that important decision.

Divorce can be financially devastating divorce for women. Despite our continued push to raise the glass ceiling, the truth is that men are far more likely to be the main breadwinners of the family and that women are more likely to leave the workforce to care for children or the home.

There are huge Social Security benefits you can receive if you were married to your spouse for at least ten years before divorce and were the lower-earning spouse. When you reach retirement age, you are eligible to receive benefits equivalent to 50% of your ex-spouse’s Social Security benefits if that amount is greater than what you would otherwise receive.

When you sit down across the negotiating table with your spouse, the two of you need to figure out a fair and equitable way to divide your assets. Easier said than done! You’ll both have to process a lot of difficult emotions, and you’ll probably have a lot of questions too.

It’s a matter of trust. Divorce can be one of life’s most difficult transitions, emotionally, legally and financially.  And, with infidelity being one of the top reasons that couples call it quits (1), one of the biggest stumbling blocks of the entire divorce process is that trust may have gone out the door along with the unfaithful partner.

“The abuse became worse over the last couple of years. Especially the verbal abuse — it’s very demeaning and demoralizing. I was thinking I wasn’t even a person anymore,” Anne, a forty-ish Californian, confesses shakily to financial advisor Ginita Wall. “When I ran across Second Saturday on the internet, everything I read just clicked with me. I said, ’This is what I need. This is my way out of here.’”

Divorce is an uphill battle, fought in language you don’t understand, using money you can’t spare, for a prize that’s only half of what you had before. What can you do to make sure your newly-overhauled financial ship doesn’t sink?

Nearly a million couples divorce each year in the U.S. and in the process, face some of the most important economic decisions of their lives. You may benefit greatly from the services of a financial professional trained to help you choose the best options for your future well-being—the Certified Divorce Financial Analyst.