THE BLOG: At the Threshold
Open enrollment arrives every autumn and most people handle it the same way, which is by clicking renew and returning to their day.
In an ordinary year that is a defensible choice. In the first year ...
The most expensive misunderstanding in American retirement planning is the belief that Medicare pays for long term care.
It generally does not. Medicare covers medical care. It will cover a limited s...
Maintenance is the term Wisconsin uses for what most people call alimony or spousal support, and almost everything women believe about it going in turns out to be somewhat wrong.
The first correction...
There is an envelope on the counter. It has been there for eleven days. You know approximately what is in it. You walk past it several times a day, and each time you notice it, and each time you do no...
In the first thirty days after a death, almost everything that feels urgent is not, and the few things that are genuinely urgent are quiet.
That inversion is worth understanding, because grief comes ...
Wisconsin is a marital property state, which means the starting assumption in a divorce is that what was acquired during the marriage belongs to both of you and gets divided equally.
That sounds simp...
The first meeting with a divorce attorney is expensive, short, and easy to waste.
Most women arrive with a story and leave with a list of things to go find. That is a normal first meeting and it is n...
Someone has to do it, and it is usually the person who is grieving hardest.
The role has different names in different places. Executor, personal representative, administrator. In Wisconsin the term i...
A woman can be married for thirty years, pay every bill on time, manage the household finances competently, and still arrive at a divorce or a death with a credit profile that does not fully reflect a...
There is a stretch of years, usually somewhere between forty five and sixty five, when a woman can find herself financially responsible in three directions at once.
Upward, toward parents who need mo...
Most people believe their will controls what happens to their money. For a significant portion of the average household's assets, it does not.
Retirement accounts, life insurance policies, annuities,...
Divorce after fifty is a different event than divorce at thirty five, and treating them the same is how women end up in trouble.
The emotional differences are obvious enough. A longer marriage, adult...
