Preparing Financially for a Divorce

Going through a divorce may not be the eas­i­est time to go through, and yet as they say in many areas of life, prepa­ra­tion may help ease the process. While no per­son wants to start plan­ning for a divorce before they are ready, there are signs that a cou­ple may be head­ing that route, and when that hap­pens start­ing prepa­ra­tions may just be what helps you keep your stress lev­els to a minimum.

One of the first things you can do to finan­cially pre­pare for your divorce is mak­ing sure that you have your hands on the nec­es­sary doc­u­ments. This would include your credit card, invest­ment, retire­ment, and bank­ing state­ments. Keep track of all of your loan doc­u­ments along with you W2 forms and your taxes. Hav­ing these all together prior to the actual divorce fil­ing will save you a lot of time.

Another key aspect of prepar­ing finan­cially is to have a good under­stand­ing of you and your spouse’s assets, prop­erty, cur­rent income as well as your debt. Accu­mu­lat­ing this infor­ma­tion may take time, so prepar­ing for this prior to or imme­di­ately upon the deci­sion of a divorce is going to be ben­e­fi­cial. The costs of your divorce depend greatly on what type of a divorce it will be, for exam­ple if it is uncon­tested it means that you and your spouse will be able to come to an agree­ment of how you will divide assets, estab­lish child cus­tody, etc.

In the event that there is a con­tested divorce, there is the pos­si­bil­ity of lit­i­ga­tion and court fees, there­fore it will require you to pay more for the divorce over­all. With the help of an expe­ri­enced divorce attor­ney you will be able to go about your divorce process much more smoothly as well as make sure that you have a thor­ough under­stand­ing about the legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of every deci­sion that is made. If you are in the Los Ange­les area, con­tact us today to dis­cuss your divorce and fam­ily law concerns.