Are you getting ready to divorce and you want to know how to prepare yourself financially?
By the end of this video, I'm going to give you lots of tips and tricks on what to do
to prepare yourself financially for a divorce. Hi, I'm Rebecca Zung, top 1% attorney and
the bestselling author of the books Negotiate Like You Matter and Breaking Free: A Step-By-Step
Divorce Guide, and I've helped thousands of people just like you through divorces when
they were in the depths of drama, trauma, and chaos, and I've helped them step into
lives of freedom, possibility, and purpose. I give you tons of information and tips and
tricks right here on this channel. So if you haven't subscribed to my channel already,
make sure you do that now. Subscribe and hit that notification bell, and that way you'll
get notified when I upload brand new content. Now, let's talk about how to prepare yourself
financially for a divorce. If you are getting ready to go through a divorce, it's different
to prepare financially if you are what we call the moneyed spouse or the non-money spouse.
The moneyed spouse is usually the one who is making more money, and very oftentimes
the moneyed spouse is the one who has more control over the finances.
Sometimes it's not necessarily that way. Sometimes you see the person making the money and then
the other person who hasn't been making as much is the one who has been paying the bills
and in control of the finances. But a lot of times what you see is you see the moneyed
spouse also usually has control over the actual money. If you are the non-moneyed spouse or
the person who doesn't have control over the finances, it's really even more` important
for you to prepare yourself financially for divorce.
If you are getting ready to divorce a narcissist or anybody, make sure you check out my video
on before you divorce a narcissist. Watch this, because that will give you tons more
information. If you are getting ready to divorce a narcissist or anybody, and you're in it
to win it, give me a, "In it to win it," in the comments.
Regardless of who you are, whether you're the moneyed spouse or the non-moneyed spouse,
the very first thing you're going to want to do is gather your financial documents.
When you go to file for divorce and once the divorce is filed, regardless of where you
are, you will have to disclose information about your finances. Generally that means
a couple of years of tax returns, several months of bank statements, credit card statements,
savings accounts and checking accounts for both personal and business. It also means
credit card statements for both personal and business, and it usually means any kind of
prenuptial agreements, deeds for real estate, retirement account statements, pay stubs.
The way that you've been paid, whether maybe it's a 1099, or maybe it's a W-2, or maybe
it's a K-1, but you will need to be able to have access to all of that information or
actually copies of all of that information. Your lawyer will need that. A.
For how long will you need it for? I mean, at least several months worth of financial
statements for banks and credit cards, probably at least a couple of years of income information
for your tax returns, and then at least a couple of months of statements for current
pay, pay stubs, things of that nature. That's number one is gathering your financial information.
Sometimes if you're the non-moneyed spouse, it can be kind of hard to get access to that.
Don't beat yourself up over it. If you can't get access to it, then it will have to be
disclosed anyway once the case gets started. But it's a little bit easier for your lawyer
if you've already got that information, because now that avoids having to send out requests
to produce, and then if the other person doesn't produce the documents, then your lawyer now
has to file some kind of motion to compel the information to be disclosed to you. I
would just say the more you can get your hands on, the better it is.
I actually had a client one time who would just get little bits and pieces and she would
just drop it off at my office. She did that for like two years before we actually even
started the divorce, but that's what she did. Gathering your financial information is going
to be really, really important. Number two is going to be understanding your
lifestyle and tracking your expenses. If there's going to be any kind of a claim with regard
to alimony, or support, or maybe even child support or something like that, lifestyle
and monthly expenses may end up being an issue. It's really good if you have a really good
understanding of how much you've been spending monthly on anything including mortgage, taxes,
insurance, electricity, utilities, cell phones, but also dining out, insurances, pet expenses,
grooming, gifts for people, any kind of children's expenses, tuition, lunches, anything that
you're spending for the children, extracurricular activities, things like that. Make sure you
have really good understanding, if you can, of what the lifestyle has been, because that
will also help you as well. Sometimes people need to hire forensic accountants for lifestyle
analysis, and if you've already done the work, it will save you lots and lots of money.
Number three is having access to cash, because especially if you are the non-moneyed spouse,
yes, your lawyer can potentially file something for you to get some sort of a support for
you on a temporary basis and going forward. Yes, maybe your spouse will continue to deposit
their paycheck into the joint account or let you have access to credit cards and things
like that, but they may not. They may cut off your access to that. Yes, your lawyer
can file something that orders the court where the judge will order the narcissist or whoever
the other person is to continue to pay for those things for you and continue to give
you access to those things. But in the meantime, while they've cut you off, your lawyer has
to file the motion, get the hearing time, get in front of the judge, get the judge to
give a ruling, and all that time you're trying to live, and how are you going to?
If you can, ideally it would be better if you have at least a few months worth of cash
that you have access to, that you have sole control over, and also enough to hire a lawyer
if possible. If you don't have a way to save it up for yourself, maybe you can call upon
family members or friends to get a loan for you so that until your lawyer can go and get
that money back from the spouse, from a court hearing, that you take it out in loans. Obviously
there's no guarantee that you can get it back, but that is something that you will want to
talk to your attorney about. But in the meantime, if you can get access to having enough cash
to get you going for a few months and also hire an attorney, that would be the ideal
situation. The last thing is just prepare yourself and
your documents and making sure that your trust account, I mean any trust documents or wills
or anything like that state what you want them to say. Because once you get going with
the divorce, you may or may not be allowed to change beneficiaries or change what is
in your trust documents or your wills or things like that, or beneficiaries on IRAs, because
sometimes it, depending on the jurisdiction that you're in, there may be a standing order
issued that gets issued. It's an order of the court that gets issued as soon as the
divorce is filed, which precludes people from big changes. It will preclude you from also
putting the house on the market or doing anything like that unless you agree to putting it on
the market or making these big changes. If there are changes that you want to make, you
should probably talk to your lawyer, but those are the kinds of things that you're going
to want to do prior to the divorce being filed. If you are getting ready to divorce a narcissist
and you're getting ready ... or anybody, and you're getting ready to negotiate with that
person, you should definitely check out my free Crush My Negotiation prep worksheet.
You can get it at the link below or just go to winmynegotiation.com. Do not go into a
negotiation without it. If you are dealing with a narcissist or any
other kind of high conflict personality, make sure to come on over and join us in my free
private Facebook group. It's called Narcissist Negotiators with Rebecca Zung, And we'll drop
a link to that below as well. If you liked this video, give it a like, give it a share,
drop me a comment. Let me know that you were here. I'm so glad that you were here. If you
haven't subscribed to my channel, now's a good time to do that. Subscribe and hit that
notification bell. I'm Rebecca Zung. I'm so glad that you were
here and that you stopped by my channel. Remember, today's a great day to start negotiating your
best life. I'll see you in the next video.