My wife and I have been negotiating our divorce for several months. We have a pretrial conference coming up. I thought we had a deal and would be finalizing the divorce that day.
Two weeks ago, she went to see a financial planner. As a result she fired her attorney, is looking for half my income as alimony and wants me to go meet with her financial planner, who she says will help us mediate the issue. My lawyer says she will never get half my income and we should stop wasting money talking to her and just go see the judge.
I don’t want to fight in court but she won’t let this go. I’m having trouble understanding why her financial planner would advise my wife to fire her attorney and handle the divorce on her own with the planner’s help. Is that really a role financial planners take on? What are my options?
There are a lot of highly capable financial planners out there who know what their role is and stay in their own lane. Unfortunately, this is not the first troubling story I’ve heard. It is not for the financial planner to give legal advice or mediate the divorce. At times it can be beneficial to show both parties the financial projections being made, but generally I ask the planner to provide me with some spreadsheets that I then share with the other side.
The financial planner’s job is to look at the offer being made and show your wife her post-divorce budget, where the money will come from, and at what point she will run out of money. From there, if your wife is likely to run out of money too early, there is a discussion as to where additional cash flow can come from. Generally that involves getting a job if your wife is not already working or going full time if she is working part time. Often the conversation then turns to how your wife can reduce her budget.
Before going back and asking for higher than the standard percentages on alimony, the better approach would be to see if there are things she can ask you to assume paying for to allow her to save more.
Bottom line, alimony is based on her need or 30%-35% of the difference in your respective incomes. Now that alimony is not a taxable event, the percentage should drop to more like 22%-27%. It will cost you far less to go let the judge tell her she will not get half your income than it will to pay her half. Go to court, then renew your prior offer.