We are setting up a financial consulting appointment next week with a CDFA (Certified Divorce Financial Analyst). As brief background, this was my W's idea initially, and I am fully supportive. W has stated she thought this would be good for "budgeting." As with most DB issues, I've learned to let go of trying to figure out her motives.
It was a bit of a gut punch to receive the initial documents to fill out: full disclosures of assets and expenses in preparation of D. I'm not sure if we D if I would agree to a joint advisor, although I'm not sure I wouldn't agree either. I am only interested in what's fair to both of us.
Those of you who have followed me since the beginning know I used to make a lot of lists. For this item, I see mostly positives
Pros:
+ W and I both have clear exposure to the cost of the physical separation + W and I both have clear picture of a post-D life and how we would need to adjust lifestyle + Elimination of any implication of unfairness or hiding things
Cons:
- Feels a little like a push towards D (or financial separation).
Heck, I'm not even that concerned about the outcome of this consultation... now that is DB progress! I assume the CDFA will guide us towards a financial separation. My W seems to think this is a "budget" exercise, although I'm not sure for what purpose - are we going to buy generic brand Mac&Cheese for the kids now?
Went through the same thing here. It was definitely a gut punch going through all of the actions of D, listing out the assets, and tangibly picturing life without WAW. My pros and cons were exactly the same.
I talked about it with my IC, and here was his view: regardless of the motives, it's unreasonable to expect WAW (or you!) to be able to make a decision on how to move forward without a clear understanding of all of the implications.
My natural inclination was to be pessimistic regarding intent, and wonder why doing the exercise was important to worry about now, as opposed to when and if there was a decision to D. That line of thinking doesn't help anyone, it only makes you defensive towards WAW and pessimistic towards the future.
Knowing that reticence around having honest discussions about finances and our future together was an issue in our relationship, I treated it as a 180 opportunity. As it turns out, WAW hasn't really mentioned it since - I've done the work of organizing my documents, uploading them to Dropbox, and creating a Python script to auto-pull our transactions into a spreadsheet for budgeting. Maybe she was expecting it to be more of a fight or a struggle, I don't know - but it hasn't been really addressed since.
