How Do You Plan for a Divorce?

When careful planning is done, divorce can be made much easier.

Divorce, no matter what the circumstances, will most likely be an emotional and stressful time for all parties involved. Additionally, things are decided in a divorce that will have a lasting impact on your personal and financial life. While it will be difficult, steps can be taken to minimize risk and help streamline the process. Even if just a little stress is removed from the situation, it will be well worth it.

Consider taking the following steps to plan for your divorce:

• Accounting. One of the first things you should do is make an accounting of all marital assets. This ranges from personal property and real property to bank accounts and financial investment accounts. Once the word “divorce” is brought up, some people find that these things disappear or have lowered in value. Create a file of all financial records you can for you and your spouse, both separate and jointly held accounts. Preserve them for later-on.
• Credit check. Additionally, run a credit check on yourself. This is a great time to look at your personal finances and credit score and clean up any discrepancies that may appear there.
• Stay in the marital home. In addition to taking active steps to plan for divorce, planning for divorce may also require some inaction. For example, if you have children with your current spouse and all live together in the marital home, you may want to seriously consider staying there. This is of course if it is still a safe place to stay. Some want to leave the house immediately, but this could jeopardize child custody issues late. If you have moved out of the marital home and your children have been doing fine with your soon to be former spouse, a court may be more likely to maintain status quo and not upset an arrangement that already works.