The lowdown on breakups

Divorce planning for women became our special tv 'cause we had so many women coming to us after a divorce with their settlements and when we looked at them we realized that they didn't really understand what they meant. And a lot of times we also saw that the settlements actually were not really in their favor. And when we looked out 5, 10, 20, 30 years, we could see very definitely that they were gonna have some big financial problems. We started working in this area while over 10 years ago and it's grown to be a much bigger niche of our business throughout the years. And I think partially because there's more and more in need for this type of work as divorce settlements continued to get more complex. You're dealing with stock options, capital gain, capital lost, security forwards, you're also dealing with houses with different basis. These are all very complex issues and a lot of individuals realized that they need a divorce a financial and taxation expert to be their-- part of their team. The challenging aspect-- there are two parts. There's definitely the financial piece that's challenging especially if you're dealing with a very complex case with a lot of moving parts on, you know, pensions, restricted stock, stock options, maybe with certain types of real estate especially if they're renting some out. You know, being able to navigate through all of that can be very time consuming particularly if they don't have good records or unfortunately if the other party is not being very forthcoming with any of the account statements or records. On the other side, the other very difficult and much challenging part of divorce is that you're dealing with someone really at the worst time of their life. They are financially feeling very, very anxious and emotionally feeling extremely vulnerable. Sometimes almost says a victim. So with that, you have to have a lot of empathy, a very caring nature to take time, to really be there for the person not only financially but also be able to be empathetic to what they're going through. For advisors that want to make this specialty, what I would encourage you to do is to visit a few places. The association of divorce financial planner has a wonderful website, it's called www.divorceandfinance.org. So www.divorceandfinance.org. It's a non-profit organization that is there to help you actually learn how to get these credentials of a certified divorce financial analyst. Go there and find out if you have any local chapters. There are chapters actually across the entire United States. There's actually a chapter that I'm part of here in New York that I'm actually the co-chair of. It's a great place to get started. And then I also look in your neighborhood in your community. Are there are other certified divorce financial analyst? And give them a call. Take them out to a cup of coffee and get to know about their practice. Get to know about this niche. I do have to say for any planner out there that's considering it, it's a fantastic way to grow your business. It's a fantastic way to go home at the end of the day knowing you made a real big difference and it's a fantastic way for you to continue to learn and really be able to take your career to that next level 'cause there's so much to know about divorce and it's really, really exciting, exciting work.