Chapter One

1. You’ve Got This

In marriage, women frequently take a back seat when it comes to managing their finances, despite their level of education and capabilities. Many of our clients have been married to alpha males who have controlled and managed everything, from retirement accounts to taxes to investment property. The advisors your husband has relied on may be people you have known and liked for years, such as your CPA, attorney, or wealth manager. You may have even socialized with them regularly. Unfortunately, they may not always be the people to turn to for help when it comes to your divorce.

For example, your CPA may have a conflict of interest if he or she also represents your husband’s business. You may be more comfortable establishing a new relationship with a CPA disassociated from your husband and his business. In fact, it is our strong recommendation for you to establish your own team of advisors. Think of your divorce as being similar to longtime partners in a business deciding to go their separate ways. In that scenario, business partners each have separate attorneys, business appraisers, and other advisors to consider each partner’s interests and help negotiate and execute the deal. If you are an alpha female and have been the primary breadwinner in your relationship, it is likely that you may choose to stay with your current team of advisors. This will generally be the case if you are the one who has proactively handled those relationships in the past.

In Chapter 2, we will discuss in detail how to select your lawyer. By following those recommendations, you will be able to select an attorney who will assemble your “dream team” to help you navigate your divorce case. At the conclusion of your case, as you transition into working primarily with your wealth management team, you may add additional members to your team as the divorce lawyer’s role ends. Please make sure your lawyer and/or wealth management team will be able to connect you with the best professionals to help you achieve your financial goals.

We gave our client Laura this same advice. Laura is a public schoolteacher and is twelve years younger than Ron, a real estate investor who owned one of Palm Beach’s top boutique hotels. When Laura and Ron’s marriage fell apart after twenty years, she was extremely concerned about how she would provide for her two sons and have sufficient monthly income to live on her own. She’s always depended on Ron to provide financially for the family.

We helped Laura and her lawyer form a team of successful professionals who were as knowledgeable as they were loyal. We told her to do what all CEOs do, which is to surround themselves with the most competent people they can find. Do you think Bill and Melinda Gates manage their own money? No. Most successful people know they need team players who can counter their weaknesses. Not one person on the new team Laura assembled came from the advisors she and Ron used during her married life.

Shortly after her divorce, Laura came into our office for one of her regularly scheduled review meetings. She was adjusting well to life on her own and becoming more comfortable handling the finances. Eighteen months later, when she came back again, we could not believe we were talking to the same person we had met at the beginning of her divorce. Laura was excited about life; she had a new boyfriend and enjoyed new hobbies. She is still working as a teacher and was able to buy her own house—with three bedrooms for her sons to use when they come home from college.

What’s Important Is the Present

At this critical turning point in your life, it is important not to beat yourself up. Questions we often hear our clients asking themselves include, “How could I not have been involved with our finances?” or “Why was I so naive?” Remember, though, that when people get married, they function as a team. They divide their duties, jobs, and roles. In many cases, women take care of the home and children.

Even a financially literate woman can find herself in a situation in which she never could have imagined. One of our clients, Debbie, was the practice manager for a large Jacksonville law firm. Her husband, Rick, had a successful orthodontics practice. Debbie and Rick enjoyed an extravagant lifestyle. While assisting Debbie and her lawyer with the couple’s divorce case, we helped identify thousands of dollars of personal expenses and gifts that Rick had purchased for his girlfriend. Not only that, but he had financed them through his orthodontics practice. Because Debbie had always trusted Rick, she never thought twice about looking through his practice’s financial records. Having experts who were skilled in spotting these types of issues added necessary expertise to Debbie’s case.

If you can’t stop ruminating that here you are getting divorced and you have no idea what your assets are, then step back from that runaway train of thought. Financial literacy is still rarely taught in school, even in college, which means a tremendous number of adults are not educated in basic finance. If you don’t know what compounding means, or what a 401(k) plan is, or how to accurately assess a rate of return on an investment, you’re not alone. Your team of experts should be able to help you demystify and understand your finances. Your wealth management team is responsible for educating you on your financial matters, both during and following your divorce. This is one of our primary goals with all of our clients who are in your situation. Place your trust in your team of professionals to do their jobs, and know that you will be in good hands.

Tenets of This Book

As we said in the beginning, this is a guidebook designed to make a complex financial journey as simple and easy to understand as possible. The book’s tenets are:

1. Assemble a team of competent advisors who regularly communicate with you and each other.
2. Have a written plan.
3. Keep the process as simple as possible.
4. Be an optimist; everything is going to work out.

Assemble a team of competent advisors who communicate with you and each other. The importance of step number one, assembling an all-star team of advisors, has already been discussed. Their responsibilities should be clearly identified in your plan. For example, you may need a CPA or forensic accountant to examine a corporation’s books to ascertain if personal expenses are being paid for by your husband’s business, as well as what the tax consequences are of the financial transactions performed by you and/or your husband.

Have a written plan. When our client Jan first came to us, she did not have a written plan to help manage her divorce. As a result, her case was stretching out month after month with no end in sight. Attorneys’ fees were piling up. Jan was under constant stress. She was receiving temporary alimony, but it was insufficient to meet her needs. Because there were no deadlines and the case was not yet set for trial, she and her case continued to languish. She had no idea she had the right to request that the judge set deadlines for the timely completion of her case. Unfortunately, her lawyer never discussed a case management plan with her either.

Early on in your professional relationship with your lawyer, you should develop a case plan for the efficient and successful completion of your case. A case management order outlines a schedule for each party’s attorney that designates deadlines for such matters as discovery, mediation, the pretrial conference, and the trial itself. (Note: we’ll go into more detail in discussing each of these stages throughout the rest of the book.) The written plan for your case should be comprehensive and should include the evidence and testimony you will need to provide the court to prove your case. With a written, detailed plan, nothing falls through the cracks and no surprises surface after the conclusion of the divorce. Plus, the plan keeps everyone accountable and ensures that your case is progressing toward completion.

It is easier to grasp the importance of a solid plan when you think about the blueprint and the plan for building a house. Before anything can happen, the site must first be prepped and graded. Next comes the foundation. You cannot install electrical and plumbing if there is no roof. Without a plan for what needs to happen and when, the entire process is haphazard, and the contractors have both a blank check and the ability to come and go as they please. Similarly, a written plan for your divorce designates a schedule for critical milestones such as discovery, depositions, and determining which experts may need to be involved. A plan also helps keep a lid on the amount of money you are or might be spending on attorney’s fees. The plan may evolve as the case progresses or when new information or circumstances may dictate a change to the plan.

Keep the process as simple as possible. The third tenet of this book is to keep the plan—and the overall divorce process—as simple as possible. Keeping things simple for the court or for a mediation conference entails, for example, using an easy-to-understand chart or a clearly written one-page summary. It’s important to remember most judges and mediators aren’t financial experts. As a result, everyone with whom you are interacting must understand what you’re trying to convey. If evidence is overwhelmingly complex,...