every dollar is allocated, empowers you to make informed decisions. It also helps you avoid unnecessary stress as you navigate the uncertainties that often accompany divorce. Your emphasis on thorough financial preparation and cooperation with your legal counsel underscores the importance of taking proactive steps to protect your financial well-being during this challenging period. For the previously stated reasons, it is critical that you collect and immediately provide to your lawyer all information regarding your home insurance, property taxes and liens, mortgage and marital debts, and marital assets. The more prepared you are to face your financial future, the more secure you will be moving forward. Knowing where every dollar has to go will help you make better decisions and avoid adding undue additional stress to the already uncertain future that accompanies divorce. Knowing where you stand financially greatly influences your decision to keep, sell, or buy out the family home. There are many considerations for each option, and they all require a significant amount of due diligence, financial planning, and difficult decisions. Affordability and objective forethought are the keys to your decision-making process. Poor decisions can affect you and your former spouse, long after the divorce is finalized.
KEEPING THE HOUSE
When divorcing couples have school-age children, they often decide to allow one spouse to remain in the home to avoid disrupting the children’s routine, school attendance, and social relationships. This can be accomplished with written agreements between the spouses. Equitably allocating home expenses and mortgage payments by percentages or mutually agreeing on the delegation of financial responsibility will allow your family to
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