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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Some women arrive at a financial transition and discover, in the middle of it, that the financial life they thought they had was partly fiction.
A credit line neither of you discussed. A retirement a...
In almost every divorce I have worked on, the house comes up early and it comes up loaded.
It is rarely presented as a financial question. It is presented as the thing that will keep life recognizabl...
Most people walk into divorce trying to win the split. The ones who come out the other side feeling steady tend to start somewhere quieter. They figure out what safety looks like first, and let the di...
She arrives in my office with a folder of tax returns, a couple of statements she found in a desk drawer, and an apology already forming on her lips.
"I should know more about this."
"I feel embarrassed...
When most people think about the financial side of divorce, they think about lawyers. Maybe accountants. What many people do not know about -- until they are in the middle of a divorce themselves -- i...
