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Ways to Keep Divorce Costs Down

Don't let the expenses associated with divorce spiral out of control. Consider these cost-saving measures to make divorce easier and less expensive.

Divorce is an emotionally difficult process. It can prove costly for both parties. With forthcoming expenses such as alimony, child support, and relocation costs looming over you, the last thing you want to do is spend a great deal on the divorce process itself. Consider these ways to keep divorce costs down and ease some of the burdens of this life change.

Stay off the Line

As you work with your attorney during the divorce process, always ask yourself: "Could this call be an email?" Lawyers charge by the hour, and even though no one worries about racking up their phone bill anymore, you'll have to worry about racking up your legal bill. Keep face-to-face meetings short and remember that time is money.

Organize Your Finances Ahead of Time


organize your finances


Financial transparency isn't just important to keeping a divorce process as frictionless as possible—it also saves money. Most divorce concerns involve dollars and cents. Another financial concern involves racking up the billable hours with law offices. Streamline the process and cut down on those hours by obtaining and organizing all financial records pertaining to your divorce. Provide at least the last three years of bills, tax returns, and other important documents to your attorney. You'll save them time, which saves you money.

Explore Alternative Dispute Resolutions

Couples don't need to go through a lengthy court case to secure a divorce. While all divorces require a judge's approval, the rise of alternative dispute resolutions helps make divorce more efficient and less costly. One of the best ways to keep divorce costs down is to opt for one of these strategies. The availability of standardized documents makes do-it-yourself divorce possible if you can navigate the process with confidence. If possible, choose mediation over litigation, in which both parties forgo individual representation in favor of a neutral mediator who facilitates agreeable or mutually beneficial compromises. You'll both slash your legal costs as you navigate divorce. A collaborative divorce process requires both parties to retain an attorney, but by bypassing litigation and keeping court costs to a minimum, you'll still spend less than you would have had you truly gone to court.

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I Never Thought I'd Land In Debt, But Once I Did, Pacific Debt Saved Me

No one chooses to be in debt; I certainly never expected it to happen to me.

You feel trapped under all the payments, constantly feeling the heavy burden. Shortly after my divorce, I found myself with significant medical bills, dealing with the financial stress of living alone, and before I knew it I was drowning in over $30,000 of debt.

I was living paycheck to paycheck and trying to put on a happy face for my kids, but the minimum payments due each month were overwhelming (and they weren't even helping me pay off my debt). Declaring bankruptcy was always in the back of my mind, but I knew that those consequences could follow me for the rest of my life.

To pay off my debts by making minimum payments, I needed to pay exactly $407.54 every month for the next 361 months, which would result in me paying a total of $146,734.02 by the time I turned 75. But my debt was only about $35k! I had heard that some people can negotiate their debt down, so I called the bank a few times but never got anywhere.

I needed someone to help me get through this, so I did some research and that's when I found Pacific Debt, a debt settlement company that provides debt relief and support services to people like me. After answering 3 short questions, how much I was in debt, how far behind I was on payments and what state I lived in, I had a free consultation.

Pacific Debt is a solution for those struggling with more than $10,000 in unsecured debt. They help get your overall debt amount and interest rates reduced by negotiating on your behalf with your creditors. Once a settlement has been reached and you approve, your total debt will decrease. They'll even help you open a Special Purpose account to keep your funds separate and to pay off your debt. This means I just had to pay one monthly payment instead of four.

From the get-go, my rep was always there when I needed them. It's never easy talking about financial problems to anyone, let alone a complete stranger. Even with all this in mind, my representative was very friendly and calmly listened to my financial troubles. She set me up with my own personalized plan, and the first time in a long time there was actually light at the end of the tunnel. It felt amazing to have a plan to actually get out of debt.

Throughout the process, they constantly reminded me that I was not alone and that they understood my situation. Their words of encouragement really helped me get through. Debt Settlement services can be sweet talkers or swindlers, but Pacific Debt was able to give me physical proof of their success. They negotiated with my creditors to lower my interest rate as well as my principal amount owed. At this point, I knew I had chosen the right people who would stick with me every step of the way.

Debt can be a huge pull on moving forward with your life, so if you have any other concerns, Pacific Debtcan answer all of your questions for free. The first step in the debt settlement process is to have a free phone consultation. Give them a call at (844) 997-0475 to see how they can help you.

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Refinancing My Car Post-Divorce Was The Best Decision I Ever Made

I never thought I'd become a divorce statistic, but here I am.

At first, I was grateful that we weren't separating on the ugliest of terms - there was no cheating or anything like that, it's just that every decision became shrouded in a passive-aggressive dance–the usual communication breakdown.

But then. For the divorce proceedings, he lawyered up with a shockingly expensive firm and tried to squeeze every penny out of me! I, slack-jawed and in tears, sat across from a blank-eyed version of him, while his expensive suit rattled off everything about me that did not look good on paper.

I hired the best lawyer I could find and drained my bank account to set things right.

So, single in my 40's, listening to the records my ex-husband hated at full volume in my new, smaller living room, I'm happy, but broke. Very broke.

Living on a single income with rent and divorce-related bills still piling up sent me into a panic. Looking around at all my assets (half as much as before), there was still one shining beacon of hope: my sweet little car, Eleanor. I'd bought her two years ago, and she was still in the top 5 of every reliable car list out there.

When looking at forums on how to sell a car, tears in my eyes, I found a second option; refinancing my loans with a company like RateGenius. If you have good credit, you can refinance as soon as a year out of obtaining your car.

I went onto their website and found it incredibly easy to navigate. I filled out a basic pre-qualification questionnaire about myself (name, address, how long I had my car for), and was informed that because this questionnaire was only a pre-qualification, I would have zero impact on my credit score.

Within minutes I was pre-qualified, and took me to a rate table to show me potential options. Impressed with what was being offered, I went ahead and finished the full application which only took minutes. It didn't take me very long to get assigned with a representative Jenny, who held my hand throughout the entire process.

Because my car was very important to me, I asked her multiple questions with a lot of details, and Jenny patiently and kindly explained everything back to me. She told me first and foremost that I wouldn't be in danger of paying RateGenius a large fee: the company negotiate with lenders to lower my rates or lower the amount of time I was paying, and the RateGenius' small fee would be built into my payments - if they couldn't find me a cheaper rate, they wouldn't charge me, so there was no risk.

According to RateGenius, the average savings per month is $76 per car - all I can say is that mine was higher than average! I was shocked that this wasn't common knowledge, that refinancing is that easy.

With RateGenius, I'd be seeing more money in my bank account every month while making zero lifestyle changes, at a time where nearly everything else in my life was in flux. Eleanor would stay mine, and I'd get to pay less for her every month while belting to the classic rock station at full volume.

RateGenius made it incredibly easy for me to refinance my auto loans - I had to become an expert on divorce law recently, but with RateGenius, all I had to do was enter my info, thankfully.

Update: Fill out the pre-qualification form within a minutewith zero impact on your credit score to see if you qualify for lower rates!

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The Real Cost of Divorce for Women

Here's the sad truth: Divorce doesn't just break your heart; it can leave you broke.

When married, women's median weekly earnings are about 20 percent higher than women who are divorced, separated, widowed or who have never been married, reports US News and World Reportbased on figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Married women even have the edge on single men, earning almost 10 percent more than them, too.

But after divorce, a woman's financial profile plummets, falling by 41 percent, on average, nearly twice the income loss of divorced men, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

According to research by Stephen Jenkins, a professor at the London School of Economics, men, on the other hand, see their incomes rise more than 30 percent post-divorce.

The pay gap is partly to blame. In heterosexual marriages where both the man and woman are employed, the man out earns the woman 77.8 percent of the time, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But the divide is not entirely accounted for by the difference in earning power between men and women so much as it is the pay disparity for the unpaid labor of parenting.

The main reason women bear the brunt of divorce's financial devastation, according to Jenkins, is that during the marriage, they are more likely than men to leave their careers to raise kids. "The key differences are not between men and women, but between fathers and mothers," he tells The Guardian.

Having stepped off the corporate ladder for a number of years, these child-rearing women may not have advanced as far in their careers as their spouses who didn't take off, leaving them less developed workplace skills and holes on their resumes.

"The dynamic is changing a little as more women are staying in the workforce and continuing and accelerating their careers," Nicole Mayer, a certified divorce financial analyst, and partner at financial planning firm RPG Life Transition Specialists tellsUS News and World Report, "but typically, divorce hits women harder than men."

And that's not even counting the bill of the divorce itself. According to Divorce Magazine, the cost of divorce can range from as little as $8,500 to over $100,000 for lawyers and legal fees. But if the split is amicable and you can take the DIY divorce route, you might be looking at a tab closer to the cost of an airline flight — from $200 to $500.

Remember: if the divorce isn't done yet, the price tag for lawyering up need not fall only on you, a divorce lawyer in Boston tells The Atlantic: "If someone calls me and says, 'I need an attorney but I have no money,' I remind them they're not divorced yet, so they actually do have money. In those cases, I file a motion asking for retaining fees and the other person's lawyer will cut a check."

In fact, in all divorce matters, it's important to remember your legal rights. Here's a big one: if you didn't sign a prenuptial agreement, and you live in Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, or Wisconsin, you're entitled to half of any assets acquired during the marriage. Those are joint assets to be divided equally. Even if your name isn't on the deed to the house, half of it is rightly yours.

You may have let your emotions get the better of you when you were falling in love, but don't let them cloud your judgment here at the end. The objective is to not let the pain of the breakup lead to further financial distress. Marie Claire found that women who wanted to "get it over with," experienced guilt over the end of the relationship, and those who trusted their exes to make good on promises once the divorce was finalized suffered financially.

"The silver lining [to divorce] is that most women feel much more confident, much more in control of their finances after the divorce than before," Natalie Colley, an analyst at financial planning firm Francis Financial tells US News and World Report. "That's because they're finally the ones in control of their finances."

"You always assumed there'd be two of you and maybe two 401(k)s and two IRAs, and that's now all changed," Mayer says. "So now it's really [about] updating your picture as a whole, your long-term picture."

And that can be a beautiful new image. It's time to start imagining your post-divorce dream.

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