Top Tips: Save time, money, & worry as you prepare for separation.
Successful people ask for help and get the support they need.
At Simple Separation, we are committed to providing you with valuable resources from industry experts that will help you as you go through separation and divorce.
We recently chatted to Marion Mays, a money coach, to find out her top 3 pieces of advice for couples preparing to separate. Take a look!
Navigating Separation has many considerations – the emotional challenges, the practical aspects of preparing for the separation, and then the reality of the physical move(unknown territory equals uncertainty)
Those that are best prepared seem to navigate the many stages of separation with more ease and less confusion.
And yet separation and the formalities that come with it, are often unknown, what does one even prepare in anticipation of a pending family separation?
Here are three quick tips that will save you time, money, and worry. Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of these tips, they will ensure you do separation with certainty.
TIP 1:
A good place to start is knowing about both parties’ assets, what you own and liabilities that you owe, be it to banks, family, or after-pay commitments.
Equally as important is understanding what credit cards are currently held and if you are noted as the primary or supplementary card holder.
This process may feel like you have been thrown into the life of an investigator, but it is important that you understand everything that connects you and your partner legally and financially. If there are businesses or companies involved, then www.asic.gov.au is a good place to start.
Beyond any financial information you gather it is important that you establish if a business or company is involved if you have personally given any guarantees for the business or companies debts.
TIP 2
At the most basic level it is important you have a digital inventory of all important information, think all logins, passwords, subscriptions, accounts , (the average person has between 30 to 95 of these, an easy way to manage this is simply to pull all this information into one organised form. You can even link the original documents to this list, so you have copies of things like insurance policies, passports, and birth certificates.
This is a document that should be very securely stored and passworded so it cannot be easily accessed or opened by others. Some people prefer to only store this on a USB drive, others use a digital password manager, and some prefer to keep a hard copy, whatever your preference, protecting your information should be the number one priority.
TIP 3
Thinking about yourself as an individual again, it's important to understand your credit score and to ensure your credit file is clear of any defaults, judgments, or incorrect information, this will hold you in good stead for future times if there are assets etc to separate. In Australia, you can obtain your credit score for free and there are a number of providers that do this via an online search.
Having a focus on making these three simple tips your process of pre-separation will make the journey easier and when you engage experts along the way to help you, you and they will be grateful you have all this basic work done.
If you’re looking for further advice and tips to help you through your separation, don’t hesitate to reach out to us here.
Marion Mays is a behavioural Money Coach, and property Mentor and Educator.
She has a passion for working with people post separation in the rebuild phase of life. She believes this is the time of our life when we can create our most authentic selves and dream big to create the best version of ourselves and our life, with a plethora of knowledge, lessons and experience behind us.
Simple Separation is a complete Mediation and Legal information service that assists couples to legally finalise their separation from start to finish online. All legal services are provided by our preferred panel of the best independent Family Lawyers, Estate Planning Lawyers and Conveyancers who share the same philosophy - to separate simply, fairly and respectfully.