One area that has to be addressed in a divorce is division of your assets and debts. What is happening to your house, 401(k), IRA, pension, stocks, investments, bank accounts, credit card debt, mortgage, student loans, car loan, etc. Anything and everything dealing with your finances is addressed. It can seem overwhelming but the divorce mediators at Westfield Mediation, LLC, help you break it down in to smaller, more manageable steps. Some people choose to look at all of their assets and debts and split each and every one in half. That is very doable. But this is not your only option.
One of the great positives about divorce mediation is that you can develop a financial plan that works for you. You don’t have to split every asset or debt down the middle. One person may want to keep the house and one person wants to keep all of his/her pension (and the values are somewhat similar). When you have multiple investment accounts you can each keep a whole of several accounts and divide only one of them to balance out the bottom line. What can’t happen is that one person keeps all the assets and one person gets stuck with all the debt. At the end of the day when looking at the big picture if the numbers of all of your assets and debt and all of the other person’s assets and debts are close to one another then you have a plan for your financial future.
But you also have to think about your cash flow. In order to keep 100% of your pension for the future you may be giving up another asset that you could tap into for cash right now. Will your post-divorce budget allow that? And you have to keep in mind the tax implication for the assets that you are keeping or giving up. Or the interest rate on the debts that you are keeping or giving up. There is a lot to consider and that is why some people choose to just divide everything down the middle. But you don’t have to.
For more information about divorce mediation contact Randi M. Albert, JD, or Michelle Weinberg, M.Ed., Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, at Westfield Mediation, LLC, at 908.913.0373. View our website at www.westfieldnjmediation.com or email us at info@westfieldnjmediation.com
