Before you decide: getting clear on your finances when you’re thinking about divorce

If you are thinking about divorce, the money can feel like the part you are least ready to look at. It is tangled up with your home, your children, your sense of security and the future you thought you were building. So it is easy to put it to one side and hope it becomes clearer on its own.

It rarely does. But it can become clearer with a little structure, and without you having to decide anything at all.

This is not about working out who gets what. That is a conversation for later, with the right professionals. This is about something quieter and more useful: understanding where you stand today, so that whatever you decide, you decide it from clarity rather than fear.

You don’t have to decide anything today

Thinking about divorce doesn’t mean you have to make a decision today. You may be sure the relationship is over. You may simply be noticing, for the first time, what hasn’t felt right for a long while. Either way, getting clear on your finances is not a step towards divorce. It is a step towards understanding your own life.

Many people find that once the numbers are in front of them, something settles. Not because the numbers are good or bad, but because the unknown is often heavier than the known.

Why the money feels so heavy

When a relationship is ending, money stops being just money. It becomes the house your children have grown up in, the pension you have both paid into, the holidays you won’t take. It can carry guilt, anger, fear and grief all at once.

It is also common for one person in a couple to have handled most of the finances. If that wasn’t you, you may feel you are starting from nothing. If it was you, you may feel responsible for everyone’s future. Both are hard places to think clearly from.

That is why the first step is not analysis. It is simply gathering what is there.

Start with what you already know

Find a quiet hour, a notebook or a simple spreadsheet, and write down what you know, even roughly. Don’t aim for precision yet. Aim for a first picture.

What you have

• Your home: whether it is owned or rented, whose name it is in, and roughly what it might be worth
• Savings and current accounts, in your name, your partner’s name and joint names
• Pensions, including old workplace pensions you may have forgotten about
• Investments, ISAs, shares or any business interests
• Cars and anything else of significant value

Pensions deserve a particular mention. They can be among the larger things a couple owns, and they are easy to overlook because they feel far away.

What you owe

• The mortgage, and roughly how much is left on it
• Loans, credit cards and overdrafts, and whose name each is in
• Anything you have agreed to pay, such as finance on a car

What comes in and what goes out

• Your income, and your partner’s if you know it
• Your regular outgoings: housing, bills, childcare, school costs, food, transport
• The things that come round once a year and are easy to forget, like insurance, car costs and birthdays

If you don’t know some of this, that is fine. Write down that you don’t know. That is useful information in itself.

Gather, don’t analyse (yet)

Once you have a first picture, start to gather the paperwork that sits behind it, a little at a time. Recent bank statements, payslips, pension statements, mortgage statements and any loan or credit card statements are a good place to begin.

Keep everything together in one safe place that is yours, whether that is a paper file or a secure folder on your computer. If you share devices or email accounts, think about where you keep things and who else can see them.

Resist the urge to draw conclusions at this stage. It is very easy to look at one number and spiral. You are not trying to solve anything yet. You are building a picture you can come back to calmly.

Notice what you don’t know

As you go, you will probably find gaps. Perhaps you don’t know what your partner earns, or what a pension is worth, or whether there are debts you haven’t seen.

Make a list of these gaps rather than worrying at them. Whatever route you take later, you will usually be asked to share a full picture of your finances, and the other person will be asked to do the same. Knowing your gaps now means you will know what to look for, and what to ask, when the time comes.

Think about what you need, not just what you have

Divorce conversations often focus on what there is to divide. It can help to think, separately and quietly, about what you would actually need to live on.

What would your monthly costs look like if you were running a home on your own? What would your children need? What matters most to you to protect: staying in the area, keeping their routines steady, a certain kind of security?

There are no right answers here. But knowing what matters to you means that, later on, you can make decisions that reflect your priorities rather than reacting to whatever is put in front of you.

Write down your questions

By now you will probably have a list of questions. What happens to the house? How are pensions usually treated? What would I be entitled to? How would childcare work?

Write them all down. Some of them are legal questions, and the right person to answer them is a family solicitor. Some are financial questions that a regulated financial adviser can help with. Some are questions only you can answer, about what you want your life to look like.

Sorting your questions into those three groups is one of the most useful things you can do. It means that when you do sit down with a professional, you use that time well, and you come away with answers rather than more confusion.

What this is, and what it isn’t

I spent more than twenty years in finance before I became a divorce coach, and I have been through divorce myself. So I know how much difference it makes to have the numbers in front of you, set out clearly, when everything else feels uncertain.

But I want to be clear about what I do. I provide clarity and preparation, not regulated financial advice, and I don’t give legal advice. I don’t replace your solicitor or financial adviser. I help you arrive at those conversations clearer, better prepared and knowing what you need to ask.

If you would like to know more about how that works in practice, you can read about how I help with financial clarity.

A next step

You don’t have to have the whole future figured out. You only need to know what your next step is.

If getting clear on your finances feels like too much to face on your own, you don’t have to. A 20 minute discovery call is a private, confidential conversation about where you are and what would help. There’s nothing to prepare, and no obligation.