Divorce has emotional and financial implications… and both of them can be devastating. Perhaps the one advantage of financial disaster is that you may be able to prepare ahead of time, [tag]survive divorce financially[/tag], and avoid some of the worst fallout.
Consider these revelations of the past few days:
Decades after Maya Polsky and her husband Michael Polsky arrived in the United States with just $500 in their pockets, a Cook County judge awarded her $184 million in what could be one of the richest divorce verdicts in U.S. history.
Michael Polsky’s lawyers had asked Judge William Boyd to reconsider his initial judgment last year and reduce the award. Instead, Boyd raised the amount from the original $176 million to $184 million,
The couple was married for 31 years.
Yes, length of marriage is no insulator against divorce. In Kanpur, India, an 80-year-old man has just filed for divorce in a city court. Budeshwar Shukla of Saketnagar was married to Rani Devi in 1954. They have apparently refused all attempts at reconciliation.
And the reasons for divorce can be just about anything. A middle-aged man, Mr. Lucas Ojo-Dada, has urged a court in Ifako-Ijaiye, Lagos to order his wife, Mrs. Ronke Dada, to give him N10,000 for a bus fare to his home town before granting her divorce petition.
So, how do you survive a divorce, financially?
Andrew Beattie, writing on Forbes.com, says the unhappy fact is that, once the terms of your divorce are settled, you will be poorer than you were during your marriage. The upside is that you will know exactly where you stand financially and what you need to do to get back on track.
He notes that divorce rates are expected to climb, and that people in the process of divorce “usually do not feel overly charitable toward their soon-to-be ex-spouse”.
“So their main concern,” he writes, “is that they get what they feel they deserve from the settlement. This is why couples often focus on who gets assets and how future income will be divided, while overlooking debts and loans.”
Beattie says that in many cases, mediation can save divorcing couples a lot of money. But whichever route you choose, it’s usually better to sort things out quickly and cleanly to avoid having the lawyers step in and drag out the process considerably.
And have you heard of pre-nuptial agreements? No matter your circumstances, if you’re contemplating marriage – legal, church or common law – it might pay you to investigate prenups. That way, you might at least survive divorce financially.
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