The financial decisions that you make as part of your divorce are likely to be the most important financial decisions of your lifetime. A Certified Divorce Planner, or CDP, can guide you through these stressful and complex financial issues to reach a solution that works for you.

Financial planners are the recognized experts in personal finance and possess a comprehensive knowledge of fiscal issues. As a member of your divorce team early on, a CDP can help prepare statements of marital assets and liabilities, develop accurate budgets (historical and post-separation), evaluate settlement proposal(s), minimize post-divorce taxes, be your financial coach and testify as an expert witness on issues related to lifestyle and personal finance. Through this venue, a CDP can enhance the productivity of your matrimonial attorney and boost your understanding of financial issues.

A CDP works individually with you to recognize your unique needs, goals and attitudes toward money. In divorce, when there is one pot of money to divide between two households, it is likely that everyone must make do with less. By setting financial priorities, CDPs help you plan you post-divorce lifestyle to realize the most benefit from available resources. Perhaps most importantly, CDPs can level the playing field between two divorcing spouses, where one spouse possesses less financial savvy than the other.

Planning for the future is an essential part of every divorce and fundamental to financial planning. Settlements that look fair initially often become unworkable over time due to changes in income, taxes, maintenance and child support. CDPs utilize divorce-planning software to produce 10 and 15 year projections of clients' finances. Long term analyses are necessary to check on the viability of a settlement and answer questions such as can you afford to keep the marital residence, should you give up your share of your spouse’s pension and what post-divorce lifestyle can you expect.

Most clients enter divorce looking backward toward their past seeing broken dreams, wondering what went wrong and whose fault it was. A CDP can help change your perspective to face forward toward the future and structure your finances for what lies ahead.