Barbara Sadler: Financial Planning After Divorce

After a divorce, it can take some time to adjust to your new financial situation. There is less money coming in, but still plenty of expenses to monitor. To that end, it’s important to sit down and closely analyze how a divorce will affect you financially before it is actually made official.

Here are some financial planning considerations to keep in mind as you prepare for life after divorce:

Thoroughly analyze your expenses. Many people do not completely realize the financial impact of their divorce until after it happens. To avoid being shocked, sit down and list out every one of your sources of income and your expenses. This will give you an accurate picture of what you can expect your financial state to look like after your divorce.
Consider your career. Are you going to need to find another job or embark on a new career to make ends meet? If so, you should start looking into your options right away so you are prepared once the divorce is finalized. Also consider any training you might need for a new career.
Figure out your living situation. It might not be realistic to hang on to the family home. Thus, you need to consider where you are going to be living. Will you rent an apartment? Do you have another place lined up? Will you be able to sell the home quickly?
Consider what you are losing. You’re not just losing an income. You are also potentially losing health insurance and a variety of benefits, including retirement benefits. All of these benefits should factor into your detailed financial analysis.

Tips for Keeping Your Divorce Relatively Inexpensive

In addition to being stressful for a variety of reasons, divorce can be an expensive process. Between the legal fees, property division, debt responsibilities and other costs, it’s possible you will come away from your divorce with some work to do in terms of rebuilding your financial health and stability.

However, there are some tactics you can use to help keep costs down in the divorce process. The following are just a few of them:

Negotiate as much as possible: This might be easier said than done in a contentious divorce, as your former spouse might not be willing to negotiate on certain (or any) issues. But whenever possible, negotiating allows you to compromise and avoid some expenses.
List your priorities: Create a full list of priority issues in your divorce, and determine how much you want to negotiate on those issues. This helps you form a plan of action for your negotiations and allows you to set priorities.
Be thorough with your record keeping: With the large amount of paperwork associated with a divorce (and marriage), it’s easy to lose track of some items. Be as thorough and meticulous with your record keeping as possible, and keep track of all correspondence, research, court orders, notes and other documents.

Seeking an Annulment in Utah

We’ve written about the difference between getting an annulment or divorce as well as an annulment in Utah. Though annulments have the effect of ending a marriage, they are different in various ways from divorce. Divorce dissolves a marriage, while an annulment declares it void.

Marriage is a legal contract. Just like any other contract, there are certain requires that the contract must meet in order for it to be considered valid. If one of the spouses can show that there was some material issue with the marriage contract, he or she may be successful in annulling the marriage.

Under Utah law, there are five grounds for annulment. The first is that one or both of the spouses was under the age of 18 at the time of the marriage. In order to legally enter into a contract, a person must be an adult (18 years old) at the time. If he or she is not, the contract is not necessarily void, but it is voidable.

A marriage can be annulled if one or both of the spouses was unable to consent due to mental incapacity. This can include any circumstances where one or both of the spouses is unable to give legal consent, such as if one were drunk at the time of the wedding, for example. If one of the spouses can prove that they were mental incapacitated at the time of the wedding, the marriage might be voided. In the same vein as mental incapacitation, if one of the spouses has been mentally ill for at least five years, the other may seek an annulment.

Sexual intercourse is considered part of the legal agreement of a marriage. If one of the spouses is physically unable to partake in sexual intercourse, the marriage may be annulled.

Finally, if a spouse can prove that the marriage was obtained through duress, coercion or fraud, it may be voided. For instance, if one of the spouses was threatened in order to obtain the marriage, this marriage would voidable.

Free Consultation with a Utah Divorce Attorney

If you have a question about divorce law or if you need to start or defend against a divorce case in Utah call Ascent Law at (801) 676-5506. We will help you.