By Carl Roberts
It may surprise you to know that property division in divorce can be relatively simple, quick and cheap. That’s because the process for property division is fairly straightforward. It’s only difficult when emotions and or negative motivations come into play. The 4 step process is: make your financial disclosures to one another, figure out what you have and what you want, negotiate, and reach agreement. Watch the property division video on www.splitsmart.com/couples/ for a more complete understanding of how simple the process can be.
Every step can be infinitely more expensive and difficult when individuals or couples get tripped up by their emotions, mental health issues of narcissism or borderline personality disorders or bad advice.
We developed SplitSmart to act as guardrails that keep everyone on track, regardless of attitudes or intentions. Our goal is to transparently organize both parties so they can build trust between one another to reach fair and fast agreements with minimal legal expense.
Transparency Builds Trust
SplitSmart’s organization process instills individual accountability to help ensure transparency between the couple. By treating intake and disclosures like a business transaction, it is much easier for each spouse to keep their emotions in check and for individuals to self-correct their own behaviors. The transparency reinforces the ability to trust the data. That ultimately leads to trusting one another so you can more quickly reach amicable and fair property division settlements. It really is that easy!
Think of SplitSmart’s intake as a mediator’s intake process on steroids. The outputs serve as advanced preparation for most first meetings with a divorce professional. Our streamlined process only takes most couples only an hour or two to transparently complete. Since the app connects directly with over 15,000 banks, credit cards and financial institutions, the data is current, accurate and secure. As each person identifies their incomes, assets and liabilities, our app creates a disclosure folder for each so everyone is organized from the start. SplitSmart is intuitive and adaptive to the couple in terms of satisfying each other’s need for supporting documentation.
Trust Leads to Amicable Agreements
Our process is designed to facilitate fair and fast property division settlements with minimal legal expense. The intake process where each individual transparently identifies assets and liabilities, creates a marital worksheet organized for productive settlement negotiations. Most couples can quickly figure out the basics of what they want in property division on their own. However, for more moderate or complex estates, it can be very important to consult with a CDFA (certified divorce financial advisor). A CDFA’s advice can help couples make smarter financial decisions regarding tax consequences and planning.
Regardless of the size or complexity of an estate, all couples need a martial worksheet. SplitSmart’s intake and disclosure process culminates with having a marital worksheet. Either way, with or without SplitSmart, every divorcing couple with a marital estate will have to have a marital worksheet. The question for you is, how much do you want to pay to create one: $79 using SplitSmart or over $1,000 for the CDFA to do it? With SplitSmart, couples pay CDFAs for their expert financial advice, not for collecting their data.
Organize Yourself to Save
Property division in divorce can be simple, quick and cheap when using SplitSmart for organization. Organization ensures transparency which builds trust between the couple. Trust is critical in reaching fair, equitable and amicable property division agreements. Whether you do-it-yourself (DIY) or need the help of a mediator or CDFA, SplitSmart streamlines the process saving couples thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars in their divorce. All for what you would otherwise spend on a lawyer for a 15 minute conversation.
Learn more about the many conflict reducing, time saving and economic advantages of organizing your divorce with SplitSmart at SplitSmart.com.
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Carl Roberts is the founder of SplitSmart, an innovative new app designed to simplify and reduce conflict about divorce custody and property division. Parents, attorneys, mediators and other divorce professionals benefit from this low cost, time-saving tool. Learn more about SplitSmart at www.splitsmart.com.