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Divorce Rich with Jacki Roessler, CDFA
Welcome to the Divorce Rich Podcast! Join your host, highly sought-after speaker and experienced Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, Jacki Roessler, CDFA in this engaging and down to earth show. Along with her guests, Jacki offers clear and detailed advice to improve your financial decisions before, during and after divorce so you can survive divorce rich! New episodes are posted every Thursday! You can reach Jacki through her Michigan-based firm, Roessler Divorce Consulting, located at 600 S. Adams, Suite 300, Birmingham, MI 48009 or by email at jacqueline@roesslerdivorce.com.
Divorce Rich with Jacki Roessler, CDFA
The Mailbag is Here! Divorce Rich gets Personal
Ever wondered who pays for your kid's braces after divorce? Or whether your ex can claim half your frequent flyer miles? The Divorce Rich Podcast tackles these questions head-on in our exciting new "Divorce Rich Mailbag" segment.Host Jacki Roessler, CDFA, a veteran Certified Divorce Financial Analyst introduces her son Kevyn as co-host for this listener-driven Q&A feature that will close every episode moving forward. Together, they dive into the financial questions that keep divorcees up at night, offering straightforward answers with a touch of warmth and occasional humor.
Ready to get your own divorce financial questions answered? Submit them through the link in the show notes and tune in each month for the Divorce Rich Mailbag. While you're there, schedule your complimentary 30-minute consultation with Jackie to discover if divorce financial planning might be right for your situation.
- Send YOUR questions for our mailbag to divorcerichpod@gmail.com. No question is too small -or too big!
- Schedule a free initial consultation with Jacki by clicking the link below. https://calendly.com/roessler-jacki/30min?month=2024-03
Visit us at https://www.roesslerdivorce.com/ to learn more about Jacki's practice and to find valuable resources for your case.
The Divorce Rich podcast is proudly sponsored by Center for Financial Planning: Striving to Improve Lives through Financial Planning Done Right! https://www.centerfinplan.com/
Welcome to the Divorce Rich Podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Ressler. I've been a certified divorce financial analyst for 28 years, helping clients and their attorneys navigate the often complex and confusing financial issues in divorce. If you're in the process of, or considering divorce, now is the time for you to take a deep breath and give yourself permission to find clarity on the financial issues you're facing.
Speaker 2:Rich means many things to many people.
Speaker 1:I believe the best definition of being rich is someone who has access to many resources, along with my guests on this podcast, I will be bringing you a wide variety of information so that you can make sound and informed financial decisions for your financial future.
Speaker 2:Hey, if you're recently divorced or still in the middle of it, you already know that life can feel like it's been turned upside down and, let's be honest, the financial part it's overwhelming, confusing and often the last thing you want to deal with. That's why I want to tell you about the Independent Wealth Management Team at Center for Financial Planning. Their team of certified you want to deal with. That's why I want to tell you about the independent wealth management team at Center for Financial Planning. Their team of certified financial planners specializes in helping people just like you navigate life changes with confidence. Whether it's assessing your new financial circumstances, creating or updating your retirement plan or helping you adjust to the new normal, they'll work with you to get a clear, customized plan to feel in control and move forward with confidence. So if you're interested in working with a financial planner who you can trust to have your best interests in mind and you're ready to take the next step, visit centerfinplancom that's centerfinplancom and schedule a conversation. Center for Financial Planning live your plan. Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services Incorporated. Member FINRA, sipc. Investment advisory services offered through Center for Financial Planning Inc. Center for Financial Planning Inc is not a registered broker-dealer and is independent of Raymond James Financial Services.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone and welcome back to the Divorce Rich Podcast. Today's episode is a little different in a great way. I'm excited to announce the launch of a brand new segment we'll be adding to the end of every episode beginning in August, called the Divorce Rich Mailbag. We're going to be tackling your questions, the real unfiltered stuff that you're dealing with, and I'm not doing it alone. I'm thrilled to introduce my co-host for this new segment, my son Kevin Ressler. He's going to help bring fresh insights, ask the hard questions and make sure we keep things honest, helpful and hopefully fun. So welcome, kevin.
Speaker 3:Hi, I'm really excited to be here, happy to help.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad you're here.
Speaker 3:How's it going?
Speaker 2:Great, so are we ready to start the mailbag?
Speaker 3:segment. I think, so let's get started. Yeah, so here's the first one we have from our listeners. I think this is really interesting. So I've been divorced for two years and my kids are getting bigger. One's about to get braces and the other is starting to travel baseball. How do I get my ex to help pay for these expenses?
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, that's a good question. The question might not have the happiest answer. The ideal situation is that when you're getting divorced and you have young children, that you talk about how those kinds of expenses are going to get paid, because they're not part of the child support formula in most states. So we're taping this in Michigan, but we have listeners from all over the country. Everything varies by state, but in Michigan child support does not take into consideration the actual expenses of your kids unless they're health-related, like braces. So that's one that might be easier to handle within the context of child support.
Speaker 2:But anything that is not part of child support. It's really best to negotiate those items while your divorce is still pending and then, if you can get your spouse to agree to those expenses and get that in writing, then that's something that you can enforce later on. So for the listener that asked, what am I going to do now, now that my kids have expenses that they didn't have when they were younger? So maybe you know, as they're getting little kids don't have expenses. Big kids, big toys.
Speaker 2:So whether it's a phone or a car or car insurance or all those things none of that you can't force your ex-spouse in Michigan to pay for those things. So you know, unfortunately it might be a matter of reaching out to an attorney and trying to go back to court to negotiate some of the things that weren't discussed. However, at the end of the day, I'm not a lawyer, I can't give legal advice, but if it's not in your final agreement, you're going to have a really hard time getting those things paid for, unfortunately, what else have we got All right, so here is another one.
Speaker 3:So I'm getting divorced and my spouse wants half of my frequent flyer miles that I've earned through work travel. Is that reasonable?
Speaker 2:No, oh that's another fun one that one comes up in a lot of cases.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of people have frequent flyer miles and they don't think of them as an asset necessarily.
Speaker 2:But if you travel through work and some of my clients they are traveling all year long and they might get 100,000 miles a year which could be a free trip somewhere very nice. So again, it depends what state you live in, but based on my experience in Michigan, those are anything that accumulates during the marriage, no matter whose name it's in, whether it was earned through work or not, is generally a marital asset. It's not something that people think about all the time in every divorce case, but it is something that if you're getting divorced and your spouse has frequent flyer miles, you can certainly ask for half of them and it would be reasonable to ask for half. I think that it's kind of a sore subject for some people and so like with a lot of things of financial value in a divorce, there's an emotional aspect tied to those. You know people feel like, well, I did all the work for that, I traveled for work and I got those. Why should that be a divisible asset? And you know, just like people feel like that about their pension.
Speaker 2:But anything that accumulates during the marriage, no matter whose name it's in, is generally a marital asset subject to division. So it can be divided a couple ways or can be valued. One is you could put a value on them, a dollar value for what those miles are worth, and see what the you can actually pretty easily nowadays look online. I know at Delta they'll tell you what the dollar value is of those miles. So you can you know, because you can do all kinds of things with them. You can apply them to a statement, as a credit on your credit card. You can use them for travel, you can use them for booking another flight, sometimes you can even cash them in, but you absolutely can transfer them to another person. So it can either go on one person's side of the ledger and you get an asset of equal value on the other side, or you can simply divide them, and that's a pretty easy thing to do is to call the airline and you can transfer your tickets to anybody that you want. So I love, I like that question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a good one, All right. Next question how do I know if I need a certified divorce financial analyst in addition to my attorney?
Speaker 2:This question seems almost like it was planted. That is a great question how do you know if you need a certified divorce financial analyst? So I have kind of a rule of thumb that I tell people when they ask me this question and of course I'm a little biased because I do believe that a CDFA adds so much value to a divorce case but if you have minor children and there's going to be child support, if you have a house with any equity in it, if you have any retirement assets at all, and if you've been married for over 10 years, those are all strong indicators that you probably should involve a certified divorce financial analyst in your case. Another big question to ask yourself if there is a big income earning discrepancy between you and your spouse, that's another situation. Whether you're on the high end of that or the low end as far as income goes, that's also a scenario where you really are going to be better off in the case if you have that expert financial advice.
Speaker 2:Child support in every state is based on a formula based on guidelines but, like we were just talking a few minutes ago, there are a lot of things that are not part of the child support formula.
Speaker 2:If we lived in New Jersey, for example, college costs are part of the child support formula. In Michigan they're not, so every state is a little bit different. But if you have expenses for your kids that you want to make sure get covered, it's important that you have some help to quantify what those expenses are today, but also in the future. But the real value of a CDFA, in my opinion, is to analyze whether or not the financial settlement on the table works for you today and in the future. And that's just something that a lawyer isn't trained to do, that A financial planner who's trained in divorce knows how to run financial projections. And let somebody understand like hey, I might want to keep the house emotionally, but when I look at these numbers I say I'm going to run out of money in five years if I do that. So that, to me, is the real value of having a financial advisor is to have that almost like a financial coach for the client in terms of what's the best settlement for their particular situation.
Speaker 3:Great, all right, here we go. Next question. All right, so this person has asked I found photos of my ex on Facebook with his girlfriend, who he also works with. Can I use that to get a better settlement?
Speaker 2:I hope these are the people that were at the Coldplay concert this weekend moment, where this couple was at a Coldplay concert and they were caught having an affair in public. And you know, all jokes aside, this is. It's a really good question whether or not a spouse should take advantage of that. Certainly, if you find out that your spouse is having an affair with someone that they work with, fault can be a factor I know it's a factor in Michigan In property division it can be a factor and also in spousal support, and that might be true in other states as well. So there's that part of it. The other part of it is you turn in your spouse, they might lose their job, and now the person that is the stay-at-home parent or the lower wage earner, how are they going to get child support and spousal support if that your spouse no longer has their job? So I think that that again, that's really more of a legal question. Anyway, you know what you should do about that to get a better settlement, and so there are plenty of times where I will answer a question from a client and say you know, that's more of a legal question, not a financial advisor question, and this one falls into that category of something that really the client needs to talk with their lawyer about the best strategy. You want to make sure that your spouse has a job still if you are depending on them to pay your expenses through child support and spousal support. So I think that's a tricky question.
Speaker 2:Social media is a big issue in divorce cases now. That's something that has really changed since I've been practicing. So when I first started practicing, there wasn't any social media. Nowadays, people leave a footprint. You can go on Facebook social media. Nowadays people leave a footprint. You can go on Facebook and I've had clients that have found pictures of their spouse in compromising positions with other people or at a party and looking like they're not very parental. All of that can be used now in divorce proceedings when it comes to parenting time, when it comes to proving fault in a situation, and that can be really embarrassing and I always tell people your age, kevin. Be careful what you put on the internet, because it's there permanently, especially adults that are getting divorced or in an unhappy marriage that are putting things on social media. They should not really need to think twice about it, because it's something that I see a lot in cases that that comes back to bite people? Do you find that a lot of your friends post things on social media that maybe they shouldn't?
Speaker 3:I'm not particularly active on social media. I know, I think that's unusual I know it is, but I know that, like we all especially, I am a aspiring performer and we all have to know that people, when you're looking for work, are going to be looking up your online presence and anything that you post that is in any way can have a negative interpretation about your character. Should really be thought twice at least about.
Speaker 2:Right, that's smart, thank you. We all agree, divorce is emotional, but your financial decisions shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:I'm Jackie Ressler, Certified Divorce Financial Analyst.
Speaker 2:On this podcast. I help you make smart, informed choices about money during divorce so you can move forward with clarity and confidence. Not sure where to start? Let's talk. Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with me to see if divorce financial planning is the right fit for you. At the end of this episode you can check in my show notes. There's a link for you to sign up for a free 30-minute consultation because financial peace of mind is possible. Okay, what else have we got?
Speaker 3:All right, here's our next question. My wife and I have a six-year-old golden retriever. Our whole family, kids included, love the dog. Our dog also has some severe allergies with expensive medication. How can we handle this in our divorce?
Speaker 2:Okay, Again, so many of these things vary based on what state you live in. So I can only answer based on Michigan, because that's mostly what I know. But there are a lot of things that are similar in different states. So in Michigan, a pet, even though we think of oh no, we have a family pet, even though we think of a pet as part of our family, in Michigan a pet is property no different than a car. So it's personal property and there isn't any law in place about custody of a pet and how you know, like there is with with children, where you can have set up an official parenting time through the court. It's not like that through with pets. Now, if spouses are amicable, they can agree to whatever they want and as long as they both agree to it and they put it in their settlement agreement, it's it's. It's a binding contract and it can be enforced. What I've seen a lot of people do when they have young kids is that the pet goes with the kids. So when the kids go between two parents, the pet goes with the kids. That's one interesting way to handle that.
Speaker 2:The point about the expensive medication I totally get that. My pet has some expensive medication and I've seen some people that in their budget some dogs are on some serious heavy duty medicine. There's not any way that you can guarantee that's going to be paid for. To think about when you're getting divorced and bring up with your spouse and see I'm willing to take care of the pet and pay for the pet food, maybe the vet care, but can you help me out with the medical expenses? People that are getting divorced are overwhelmed with this huge life change, and so are they thinking about who's going to pay for my dog's medicine. Probably not. If you're paying out $100, $150 a month or more, that can really add up, and so it is something that needs to be taken into consideration. So I love that question because we think of pets as part of our family, but when you're getting divorced they're just a piece of property, and so if we want there to be special arrangements made, we really have to negotiate them ourselves.
Speaker 2:And I would add one other thing onto that, kevin If you have a pet and you are divorced, you want to make sure that you have something set up If something happens to you and you're not married and there isn't another spouse to take over caring for your pet, maybe setting aside some money in a trust to take care of your pet's expenses and name? Who's going to be the custodian for your pet? Maybe setting aside some money in a trust to take care of your pet's expenses and name? Who's going to be the custodian for your pet? So that's something to do after the divorce is over. All right, let's try one more. Okay, One more question.
Speaker 3:So is it okay if I have a CDFA and I don't have an attorney?
Speaker 2:No, Kevin, it is not okay. No, I do get asked this question frequently. An attorney in a divorce case is the most important thing that anyone can do is to find the right attorney for themselves. A certified divorce financial analyst has a different role on the team than a lawyer. So a certified divorce financial analyst, I might work within the context of family law in Michigan and so I know enough based on my experience to be a good team member.
Speaker 2:But there are so many things that come down to you have to ask your attorney. You have to have a good attorney involved, because the attorney knows what the law is in the state that you live in. So, no, I never recommend to clients that they just have a CDFA, I think it's. You know I have expertise in areas that the attorney doesn't have, but the attorney has expertise in all of the important areas in a divorce that you cannot do it without an attorney. In my opinion, I think the DIY divorce where people do it without an attorney, is really dangerous because one small change in the wording in the final judgment of divorce can have a huge reverberating impact down the line, and if you're doing it without an attorney, you just don't know what you don't know. So no, I absolutely. An attorney is essential.
Speaker 3:All right.
Speaker 2:I love that we're ending on that question, because that is a question that I get asked all the time and I think that people expect me to say go ahead without an attorney, and that is never the case.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it stuck out on the list as a good one to end on. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Great. Well, thank you, Kevin, for being my reader, and I want to encourage all of our listeners if they have any questions for us. We are going to be having a mailbag segment for the last five to 10 minutes of every episode for the rest of this year in 2025. So if you're listening and you have any questions at all that you'd like us to ask, please send them to us. In the show notes for this episode. There'll be a link for you to reach out and send us your questions, and we'd love to hear what you have to say.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen to Divorce Rich Podcast. If you like this podcast, please follow us on Apple or anywhere that you download podcasts and share this link with any friends or family that you think might benefit from this information.
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