Edward Jones Diversity Series

by Edward Jones, IMDiversity Featured Employer

This Edition: "Suddenly Single: How to Avoid the Financial Pitfalls of Divorce"

Divorce, once considered taboo in the earlier part of the last century, is now a very common occurrence in the 21st Century. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 40 percent of American marriages fail.

The casualties of divorce can include emotional upheaval, children caught in the middle and financial stress. Even when a divorce is amicable and a couple makes a fair and sensible agreement of how their children will be cared for, dividing assets as well as debts may still come into play and can evoke strong emotions. During this time, while it may be more difficult to control your emotional life, you can take hold of your financial life.

Some of the things you can do to avoid the financial pitfalls of divorce include:

• building up an emergency fund in case you were once dependent on your spouse’s salary
• focusing on short-term investments to meet your current financial needs
• evaluating your retirement plans to see how they can be divided
• updating beneficiaries on investments or accounts

Other steps to protect your individual financial future could include, if you can, talking to your spouse about canceling joint credit card accounts and closing joint checking and savings accounts with a prearranged agreement to split the balances. If you are unable to work this out with your spouse, decisions of how to allocate these assets can more than likely end up in court.

Additionally, you may want to review all insurance policies you maintained with your spouse. With health insurance, if you were a dependent on your spouse’s plan, find out if you are still covered. If not, you will need to find your own plan. Long-term care or disability insurance also may be a consideration to help protect you from loss of income or a long-term illness. If you are no longer a beneficiary of your spouse’s life insurance plan, consider purchasing your own, particularly if you become the primary provider for your children.

If you are granted sole custody of your children, you also may consider rewriting a current will or creating a new one. Edward Jones, a company with more than 130 years of experience, can help you with estate planning options and other financial goals.

Pamela Bonds, a highly trained and licensed Edward Jones Investment Representative based in the St. Louis-area encourages clients who are going through a divorce, particularly those who were not the primary financial manager during the marriage, to think about the long-term investing. “This is the time to take charge of your finances, make a plan and stick to it. That's how success is generally achieved,” she said.

However, Pamela Bonds, emphasized that determining a financial plan for someone divorcing at 35 could be very different for someone doing so at 65.”We don’t use a cookie cutter approach. We can sit down and develop an individual plan and help them make decisions to assist them or their family for the next several years,” she said.

Edward Jones, the largest financial services company in America in terms of its nearly 9,000 branch offices, can help you with several financial aspects of divorce. Whether its opening an IRA or an account to start saving, reviewing life, long-term care or disability insurance, or determining the best options for assets acquired in a divorce settlement, thousands of experienced and licensed investment representatives like Pamela Bonds are available across the country to help you cope financially with being suddenly single.

Edward Jones is around the corner and online at www.edwardjones.com.

View articles from previous editions in the complete Edward Jones Diversity Series Archives

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