Family Law

Q: My husband and I are divorcing. The prospect frightens me on many levels. What advice do you have for dealing with the financial issues and consequences?

A: When you throw money conflicts in with other marital differences over religion, child rearing, dealing with family, sex and whether to recap the toothpaste tube, reaching an agreement to divorce and divide things financially can cause real fireworks.

Money is intimately connected with divorce. During a divorce, couples often argue over how to divide the assets. After the divorce, divorcees find themselves needing to adjust to a lower household income and reconfiguring their financial plans.

Hard as it may be, one of the keys to having a "financially successful" divorce is not to let your financial issues take a back seat to legal and emotional issues. While both your emotional life and financial life are important, it is vital to keep them separate. If you let your emotions interfere with the financial issues of divorcing, legal bills and frazzled nerves will accumulate.

By separating your emotional lives from your financial lives, a divorcing couple may very well be able to settle out of court. Few people are ever happy with what judges decide; negotiated settlements are usually more palatable. But if you refuse to lay down your swords, such a settlement is not possible.

In addition to keeping your emotions at bay, educate yourself financially. Take a personal-finance course and read some good books. You also might seek financial advice ? but be careful. Attorneys generally lack the training and perspective to look at your whole financial picture. Most financial advisers sell products, have other conflicts of interest and have little experience dealing with divorce issues.

Consulting with a tax adviser is worthwhile in some cases, as taxes weigh heavily in some divorce situations. For example, if you have the choice between paying more in alimony or child support, it's useful to know that the former is tax-deductible while the latter is not.

One of the most important exercises for spouses is to analyze their individual spending. Lower-income-earning spouses, who are typically women, face the biggest reduction in their standard of living post-divorce. A budget will help during the divorce to justify requests for alimony or child support, as well as with adjusting to a new financial life after divorce.

Planning for your post-divorce financial life is important. Most divorcees are faced with lower incomes and higher costs of living. The main reason: Living together as a family is usually cheaper per person than maintaining separate households.

Other financial issues must be rethought as well. You might need different insurance coverages and a new investment strategy.

If you're not committed to divorcing, perhaps all this talk of lawyers and becoming a financial and tax expert is daunting. If there's a way to work things out, especially when children are involved, work at making your marriage continue. Consider seeking help from a marriage counselor/psychologist if you can't talk things out yourselves and picking up some good books on the subject.

This Q and A from the Houston Chronicle.