ASSET DIVISION Divorce planners offer expert financial advice

Certified divorce planners bring financial expertise into the divorce process.
DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
NEW YORK -- At first, Kristin Briggs felt mistrust. Not toward her husband, who wanted a divorce, but toward her new financial planner.
"I had no idea what to expect," says Briggs, a Louisville, Colo., technical writer who had never sought financial advice during a 30-year marriage to her high school sweetheart.
But faced with a rancorous breakup and uncertainty over who-gets-what, she decided to consult a certified divorce specialist -- a relatively new breed of adviser who sifts though the financial complexities of untying the knot.
Briggs, 56, says the initial suspicion faded as the specialist helped her focus on the numbers and presented a plan for divvying up the assets, which included the family house and her husband's 401(k) retirement plan.
"When you're in that state, you're so hurting that you can't even think," Briggs says. "You need someone who can guide you down the road."
Certified divorce planners don't replace lawyers but rather bring a financial expertise to the divorce process.
Most often, their clients are women in their 40s or 50s, like Briggs, who haven't before played an active role in managing the family finances.
"The majority of women I see are scared -- they don't feel like they're in control," says Nicole Middendorf, a certified divorce financial analyst with Strategic Financial Inc. in Plymouth, Minn.
Potential for trouble
Middendorf, who has a separate brokerage practice, got into the divorce consulting business about four years ago after seeing blunders in the divorce process that led to devastating financial consequences.
In many cases, women had simply taken the house and later ended up paying big penalties to withdraw cash from retirement savings.
Often, women "ended up with assets after the divorce that didn't make sense to me. I watched women go though bankruptcies," she says. "They wouldn't have to if they had done some planning."
Middendorf received her training at the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts in Southfield, Mich., the oldest certifying body for divorce planners.
The institute, in business for 11 years, currently has 1,500 members, who typically charge between $120 and $150 an hour, and spend about 10 hours per case, according to Fadi Baradihi, the institute's president.
More than half the institute's divorce planners also are certified financial planners, and 20 percent are certified public accountants, Baradihi said.
Middendorf says her clients typically are high-net-worth individuals who seek advice to split up assets upward of $1 million. And she's witnessed an unexpected end result: The wife who initially doesn't know what she owns or how the stock market works winds up with a new -- and necessary -- interest in money management.
Middendorf often sees female clients a few years down the road who are "part of an investment club or starting a business."
Charts and graphs
During her divorce process, Briggs turned to planner Carol Ann Wilson, who used financial software to map out where each spouse would be in five, 10 and 15 years, based on net income, expenses, retirement pay, investments and other factors.
The traditional 50-50 division of property can be detrimental to the financial survival of an older wife, who more often than not has less future earnings potential than her husband, says Wilson, president of the Financial Divorce Association, another group that certifies divorce planners.
Wilson says charts and graphs can help provide an objective viewpoint in an otherwise emotional situation. When women are her clients, the husbands are most concerned about alimony payments and dividing the retirement plan.
Coming up with a long-range plan that shows each spouse can maintain acceptable standards of living can be a relief to the husband, she says.
Often, "they don't want their wife to go live under a bridge -- they just don't want to live with her anymore," she says.
Though most divorce planners are hired by women, a growing number of men are using them in an effort to protect assets, Wilson says.
In some cases, couples will hire a financial planner together if they want to end the marriage in a noncombative manner, she says.
In the years since her 1996 breakup, Briggs says she's recommended the use of divorce planners to female friends in similar situations.
And the one-time novice in money matters has since joined an investment club, taken finance courses and opened a brokerage account at Smith Barney.
Briggs thinks she initially went to a divorce planner to be a good role model for her adult daughter. "What would I teach her by sitting in this hole and putting a cover over me and saying: Tell me when it's over?" she says. "I needed to be proactive."