Getting Through a Divorce Without Losing Your Mind or Your Money!!

Too often, women don't get the help they needed. Or, they pay way too much for advice they can get without a lawyer. I've seen too many women pay thousands of dollars in legal fees for something they could have handled for free. I've seen divorcing couples burn through thousands of dollars fighting over trivial issues that should have been settled in 5 minutes. Arguing over the amount of child support is a good example. While support for your children is no trivial matter, it is one that can be settled in a hearbeat.

Your Child Support Payments Are Guaranteed By Law!

Most women don't know that child support is guaranteed by federal law. Your children are guaranteed full child support. I've seen women pay lawyers thousands to squabble over child support. I always wondered why? Child support amounts are set by state law and backed up by the feds. There is nothing to discuss! Child support can be automatically garnished from the fathers paycheck. He doesn't need to agree to anything or even be aware. You don't need to pay a lawyer to argue over full child support, it's your right under federal law. The IRS will even collect your child support for free if you know how to ask.

A recent article on the Market Watch web site addresses some costly mistakes that can be made during a divorce. Below is an excerpt from the article. I have included additional information regarding tax laws in my e-book (see link above)

By Eva Rosenberg, MarketWatch
Last Update: 10:50 AM ET Sep 25, 2006

LOS ANGELES (MarketWatch) -- Despite a divorce agreement that specifically said neither party shall pay or receive alimony, one reader, Divorced in New York, was hit with a $5,000 tax bill from the Internal Revenue Service for some phantom alimony.
Even though the IRS had a copy of the divorce agreement in hand, the agency insisted on assessing the taxes. Why? Because this woman's ex-husband presented canceled checks to prove he made payments to her in the amount reported as alimony. The IRS didn't really care that it wasn't alimony.
What were the payments? They were her portion of his monthly pension, as granted to her in the divorce. Unfortunately, the state was sending the money to Divorced's ex-husband, with the withholding already pulled out, and he was sending to her half of the net. Then, on his tax return, the ex-husband was deducting his full payment as alimony, and pocketing her share of the refund.
This problem could have been avoided if the attorney had set up a QDRO, says Patricia Powell, a certified financial planner and chief executive of The Powell Financial Group Inc., in Martinsville, N.J.
What's a QDRO? A qualified domestic relations order. Properly prepared, it instructs the pension plan to issue a check directly to the ex-wife for her share of the income.
With a QDRO, an ex-spouse can decide whether to get a lump sum rolled over to her IRA, cash it out and pay taxes, or continue to get monthly payments. She can designate how much she chooses to have withheld from her check. And, getting credit for her full share of the withholding, if Divorced had reported the pension income properly on her own tax return, she would have owed no tax.
This is a typical error when couples indulge in do-it-yourself divorces, said Lynne Gold-Bikin, chair of the family law practice group at Wolf, Block, Schorr and Solis-Cohen LLP in Norristown, Penn. Even seemingly simple divorces are more complex than they appear. They involve knowledge of both divorce law and tax law. Gold-Bikin says that if you're not a tax-law expert, you should get one to review the divorce agreement and settlement.