What Nobody Tells You About Money and Divorce

Do you actually know where your family's money is going? After almost 20 years in family law, I can tell you the partners who don't are the ones who end up most vulnerable in a divorce.

In this episode of No One Dies from Divorce, I sit down with my CoilLaw colleague Crystal Anderson to talk about the part of divorce nobody warns you about: money and power. We get into why completely separate finances are the single biggest thread I see running through divorces, the way financial dependency quietly builds over years, and the cold truth about chasing "hidden" money like crypto and cash, and how much people waste looking for accounts that were never there.

We also get into the Utah specifics: how alimony and spousal support actually work as a shift of income, what equitable division and a no-fault state really mean for your case, why "fair" is the wrong word to bring into a divorce, and what to look for when hiring a divorce lawyer who'll tell you the truth instead of just running up your bill.

If you've ever felt powerless about money in your relationship, knowledge is power. The more you understand before a divorce ever starts, the more freedom, stability, and peace you'll have on the other side.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, welcome to another episode of No One Dies from Divorce. I'm so excited because today we are going to be talking about money, power, and divorce. And I'm so excited that I get to do this episode with my partner in crime, Crystal Anderson. Welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

So excited to be here with you, Jill.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

But she's an attorney with us at COIL Law. We're so lucky, but she has a background in human resources, appellate law, and advocacy for vulnerable populations. She graduated from Boston University School of Law and she clerked for both the Virginia Court of Appeals and the Utah Supreme Court before joining COIL Law in 2026. Did you ever, when you came into the field of family law, did you ever realize how deeply money and power are connected in relationships?

SPEAKER_01 0:52

I am always surprised at the new ways that it manifests. Every relationship is different, but money is so important to every single marriage relationship.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

And people think divorce it creates final financial problems, but most of the time it doesn't. It just exposes the ones that were already there: the control, the imbalance, the secrets, the fear. So let's talk about the financial illusion in marriage, Crystal.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Yeah, I totally agree that this is a really important aspect to both marriage and divorce. Many couples look financially stable from the outside, while major imbalances exist privately in their houses and their homes. We see a lot of different patterns in our practice of divorce law, family law. Sometimes one spouse controls all the finances. One of the most common things we see in divorces is separate finances altogether.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Isn't that crazy? I want to stop you there for just a second because a lot of people think that the most commonality that you will find in divorces are like affairs or lying. But the biggest commonality that I've seen now doing this almost 20 years is separate finances. And we're going to go into this a little bit more because trust me, it is a heated and debated topic. But I wanted to make sure that everybody heard that. So keep going.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

We see so many different cases where one spouse doesn't know the passwords, they don't know their income. They don't know their other party's income. They don't know what debts they have. They might have multiple different credit cards. They don't know how to access their investments. They don't know what retirement accounts they have. And often families have money just scattered across so many different accounts. And we see clients come in and they don't know even where to get started in finding that information. A lot of times this is kind of gendered. People who have had a traditional role of maybe being a stay-at-home mom often are the people that are coming to us saying, I just don't know where to start. And sometimes that traditional role becomes financial dependency. Even for partners who seem really savvy, sometimes we'll have a client who's a business person who seems like they know what's going on, but they often realize in a divorce, I don't know what our finances are. My wife managed all of the expenses at home. And often that's really emotional for people to realize how little information they have and to feel like they're a little bit out of control as we're starting to dig into their finances.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

A lot of people don't realize how vulnerable they are financially until they no longer have access to the life that, you know, which is their marital life, right? And we always talk about the fact that because one of the heated topics that we do hear a lot was separate finances, you should do it, you know, like his money, her money. You know, what if we get a lot of excuses of uh he's the higher earner? And the biggest thing that we need to come from this is separate finances isn't necessarily mean separate bank accounts. I mean, we're talking a complete imbalance of financial literacy, meaning, like you said, they don't know anything about what's going on in the marital finances. You can have separate bank accounts, that's up to you. But what does the other person know about that, correct?

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, having access to information, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have access to every single card and can pull money out of every single account, but at least knowing that it's there, knowing what your partner is spending, helps kind of reduce some of the imbalances that can happen in a marriage and probably would reduce some divorce if we have more communication early on.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

And having common goals about like what are you guys doing with your financial picture? You know, how are you going to reach retirement? What is that going to look like? That we see so much the financial imbalance and inequity that comes because it shouldn't shock anybody that men historically make more money than women. Even if you have a two-working home, the statistics show that men are going to make more money. So to look at it as, well, I make that money, therefore I should somehow get the benefit off of that, is in my opinion, super selfish. And in no way is going to allow for a healthy and thriving marriage. In fact, I think financial illiteracy or financial control is one of the chasms or the the cracks in a marriage that is then eventually going to lead to the destruction of it. And a lot of this comes with, well, why why don't you talk about it? Like, why don't you have a, you know, you guys sit down and have a full picture of your assets. You know, a lot of people say, oh, it's because they never asked, or they didn't care, or they didn't want to be part of that. I'll be like super honest with you. My husband doesn't necessarily care about our assets or our money or where it goes. But you bet that I have um conversations with him before I'm doing anything that would be a significant investment or a shift of income that is going to affect us. He knows where to go if he ever wants to be part of that. And he has access to that information. So, so that's where I shift. So, so ask you that question. Why does that other person not know? And that's when it comes down. Is it because it's financial control? Or is it because they're actually trying to hide assets? And so I want to talk about this a little bit, Crystal, because every divorce, when you have somebody that has been left in the dark about their finances, they're almost always going to be like, he's hiding money. She's hiding money. I don't know where the money is. There's more money. And in your professional opinion, Crystal, are people smart enough to usually hide money?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

It is so hard to hide money, especially in Utah. I won't speak to other state laws, but you have a very strict requirement for disclosing assets. If both parties are represented in particular, which is likely when there's a lot of assets, it's just hard to hide money and it's not in your best interest to try. If that's our legal advice for you for the day, but hiding money is challenging. It is such an important like source of conflict, though, in a divorce. I think of a lot of clients where it's kind of tied into family dynamics. Maybe they're transferring money to a mother-in-law to pay for her house, or maybe there's some sort of investment with a friend that the other spouse doesn't feel really good about. That's a point where there's often some sense that maybe there's more going on. And really, communication can break down very easily.

SPEAKER_00 7:31

Yeah. And that's what we see. We get these people that are like, he has to be hiding money, he has to be hiding money. And they want to spend all this money to try to find those secret accounts, crypto, cash. Where is the money going? But money is pretty traceable. You know, in the United States with the the laws and the federal regulations, like money is traceable. Every dollar is traced in the United States system because every dollar they want to tax. And sometimes a dollar is taxed multiple times if you don't understand the the great tax system of the United States. But it is very hard for somebody to just full-on take money and hide it. And so we have we have to have those hard conversations with our clients about the fact that it might, you might spend so much more money trying to find money that doesn't actually exist. And a lot of times, like I said, people aren't smart enough to do it. And so we have to look at that situation. So we have a lot of conversations with our clients about the the risk benefit. Is the benefit gonna outweigh the risk? Because if it doesn't, then you know, we're gonna look at what we have right now, we're gonna look at the the facts. And in Utah, especially, Crystal knows this is that if an asset is found, even post-divorce that was not disclosed at the time of divorce, the court is most likely gonna switch the entire asset to the other side. So, so you do have some underlying uh protection. Answer this question. A lot of times it's the it's the unknowing that is really, really scary, right? For our clients. One of the biggest advice we give our clients is knowledge is power. So I kind of want you to talk through, like if you were telling a new client right now, like that's looking for through it for a divorce and they're asking you what are some things I should be doing to get prepared for this situation. I'd love for you to just kind of walk them through what the advice that you'd give them.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, I think the first thing I would say to anyone who's feeling a little overwhelmed is that you're not alone. We have so many people come into initial consults and say, I really don't, I would like to think about a divorce. Maybe I'm feeling uncomfortable in this relationship, but I feel so powerless financially that I don't know where the money is, but I don't even know where to start. So you're you're totally in good company. I think the first place is to start with just making a list. What are your assets? Do you have any real estate? How much do you think it's worth? You can find some information on the internet. How much is your mortgage if you have one? What types of accounts do you have? Do you have retirement? Do you have any other stock or brokerage accounts? Does your partner have those? Do you have bank accounts, credit cards, student loan debts? Just start by making a list. And it may be that there's a lot of question marks on that list at the beginning. And then if you're feeling uncomfortable with the relationship, hopefully most marriages you can talk about that and say, hey, I I noticed that we have got a bank statement for this bank, but I don't really know anything about that. Can we talk about it? Some relationships, it feels like there's too much of a breakdown to do that. Um, and that's where obviously a divorce attorney or someone else can help you figure those things out, figure out how to have those conversations or navigate that through the divorce process. But really starting with just making a list of everything and talking about it is a great place to start.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

And you have to remember like the easiest way to get knowledge is pull a credit report. You're married, you're capable of pulling a credit card a credit report. In fact, a lot of your banks are going to give one for free, or you guys, a lot of people have like a credit monitoring service that's gonna give it for free. Go get your credit report. It's going to have for your husband or your spouse that you think I don't know a lot of their accounts. Well, the credit report's going to list it. Anywhere that they had to open an account with their social security number is going to be on that credit report. That is one of the easiest and fastest ways that you can gain knowledge. And then just like Crystal said, start making the list, right? Stuff's gonna come in the mail because to open any kind of financial account, you have to have a place for the mail to come. So if you see a, you know, a suspicious account that you didn't know about, just write it down on your list so that you make sure that, you know, we can we can look and and then it's a very easy maybe subpoena to that account for us to really find out what it is. So, Crystal, what financial pattern do you see over and over in a divorce?

SPEAKER_01 11:55

I mean, I think we've talked about it a little bit, Jill. So many cases where especially women come in feeling fearful. Obviously, children is a big issue in divorce, but second to that is this finances, feeling like I have been out of work for a long time taking care of the home and the family. I'm a little intimidated about that process. We talk a lot about what it looks like to get alimony. People have a lot of fear about making this big choice in their life that maybe they feel like is the right direction for them, but they don't have a lot of information. And that can be really scary. We've had a lot of women, especially who've kind of trusted in the system, trusted that if I get married and stay home, I'll be taken care of. And unfortunately, at some point in many marriages, that does break down, and that's hard to see. But there are steps you can take to get more knowledge, to have power if you're in that situation and um to come out on the other side ready for a new start.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

So let's talk a little bit about the power dynamics in marriage. This becomes more like psychological and obviously really, really deep. So I want you to kind of talk a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Yeah. I mean, I think money is so deeply tied into questions of identity. What is your job? Whether you've been a stay-at-home mom or whether you've been working in different fields that make a lot of money or not very much, that's tied into your identity. It also is tied into agreements that you've made with your spouse, maybe out loud, explicitly, or maybe kind of implicitly over the course of years of I was expecting to do this job, you were gonna do that job, and we were gonna take care of each other. And maybe that hasn't happened in the way we envisioned. And that can lead to a lot of resentment. People feel like they've made sacrifices. Money is also connected to status. People are worried that in the case of a divorce, if the family's breaking down, what happens to their status? Are they gonna lose access to resources, networks, communities that they've been part of for a long time? And then as we've talked about, money is also a mechanism for control. We hear, unfortunately, cases of people whose spouse has said, if you divorce me, I'm coming for you. We're gonna fight over every single dollar, I'm gonna leave you penniless. And that's not the way it's supposed to work. We're supposed to be an equitable division state where people get something that's fair. All of those things are deeply tied up with the power dynamics during the marriage. And unfortunately, sometimes they stretch after the marriage because challenging in some cases to untangle those financial ties. But again, getting some help can help you walk through that so that you're able to stand up for yourself and get a fair deal in a in a divorce situation.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

And in Utah specifically, I mean, I'm licensed in Texas and Utah, very, very different in the way that divorce happens. Alimony or spousal maintenance in Texas is very rare and it only happens in very long-term marriages and in very few circumstances. But in Utah, we are a shift of income state. That means that income will be shifted from the higher earner to the lower earner to allow both parties to live some semelhans in the marriage outside the marriage. And I'm telling you, like nobody likes alimony. Like the person that pays it doesn't like it, they don't want to pay it. And then the person that gets it, I mean, they don't want, you know, they're never gonna get enough, or they they always feel, you know, a little bit like being dependent on that person to give me that money is really, really hard. So it's not a perfect situation, but at the end of the day, the whole goal of us as divorce attorneys is to help you understand that you're gonna be okay, to recognize that you have a pathway forward that you get to take charge of and you get to be the what's the saying? Like you get to be the artist that paints your own Cavmas now, which in my mind can be so exciting, so freeing almost. And and that's what we want to do. We want to empower you to recognize that you can step up, you're going to be okay. And that's why I wanted to talk about this because we hear the word fair all the time. I want just what's fair. I was a stay-at-home mom. It's not fair, right? That now I'm having to work or I'm having to go, you know, when that's not our plan, or the person that's paying alimony, you know, she wanted the divorce. It's not fair. I I unfortunately, divorce is not fair. The word fair should never come up in divorce. And and to be fair, it's it's rarely justice either. You're rarely going to get justice in divorce. We hear it all the time. You know, the client often is like, I worked so hard, I I deserve more, or they cheated, so they should get less. Unfortunately, in Utah, we're a no-fault state. Yes, we have fault within the statute, but it is rarely used and rarely affects anything in the divorce. I know that's a really hard thing for people to hear. We hear a lot, you know, I stayed home, so everything should be mine, or I paid the bills. I contributed financially to them to the entirety of the marriage. So it's my money. We hear you and we get it, but it's not fair. And we're here to help you understand what an equable division is, what marital contribution means. And I can just tell you, we'll get there and you're you will be okay. I wish everybody could see like the other side of divorce when they're going through it. And I get it, you can't. Sometimes it's so foggy that you're just barely able to take one step in front of you, you know, to survive. But I promise you, it's going to get better. And if you can stop using the word fair and just use, I want to do what I can to protect me and my future and my family. It's going to be a lot better of an emotional perspective to help you move forward. Talk, um, Crystal, about some of the common, like short-term mistakes that our listeners, you know, we want to try to help them avoid.

SPEAKER_01 17:55

Yeah, I would say the first big theme I see is that people who don't have money are the ones that are spending so much in attorney fees fighting about money, which is really just challenging. As your attorney, we're not here to try and just spend your money. We're here to try and get you on a path to something better. We also see a lot of people fighting over the house without considering affordability, whether they can afford it, whether they can refinance it, how they're going to pay out the other half to their spouse, people training their retirement accounts to take care of debts and things like that, and not thinking about the long-term future. There's a lot of people who have a lot of emotions throughout this journey, Jill. You mentioned that earlier. There's really an emotional side and a legal side. And people often will refuse settlement over anger. And sometimes we have to tell our clients, let's just slow down. We don't want you to sign on to something while you're so angry. But at the same time, it's stupid to turn down a good settlement just because you're mad and you want to keep fighting. People often overspend during litigation. And it's a it's a time where you are transitioning and there can be a lot of urges to buy and to spend and to get yourself on this new path, but you have to think long term about what's sustainable for you. People sometimes make the mistake of prioritizing revenge over stability. They often will agree to unrealistic support obligations and then they're coming back to us four years down the road and asking us to make a change to their decree. And unfortunately, at that point, the boat, the ship's already sailed. And then we people see people who really fight over specific assets that they can't afford to maintain when really the better deal would be to sell it and split the equity or other things like that. And so hopefully when you're going through this process, you can find someone who's a good financial partner to think through those trade-offs with you and help you set up not just for the short term, but for the long-term development for you, your future and your family.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Most people want to keep the house because it's just familiar. But then, you know, I always say, like, you make the most money out of the house if the other person buys you out. And so sometimes we have to talk through that. I talk to Crystal a lot about the fact that we're not going to settle this case until our clients are emotionally ready to get to that settlement. If you have a client that is very tied up in the emotional role of it and you try to push them towards settlement, you're never going to be able to get the reasonableness. They're always going to be mad about the settlement. But so we really work, um, especially at Coil Law and preparing our clients to understand, just like you said, like, hey, we know this is emotional, but we're now you hired us, we're gonna protect you legally, and we're going to, you know, let you kind of deal with this emotional side, but we're gonna turn over here and we're going to talk to you about why whatever we're suggesting to you makes sense. We're not gonna steer you into an agreement that we feel is unrealistic or is something that is out to get you. Our job is to make it so that it's within the confines of Utah law and that it makes sense for you and your future. So that's what our job is. I mean, we're here doing long-term thinking, we're thinking about your retirement. One of the most important things you can do when hiring an attorney is help make sure that they understand the difference of tax burdens with different kinds of assets, understanding that not all money is the same, understanding the financial burdens for you to be able to go forward if you were to get this asset, if not, because if they don't understand that and they guide you into a situation, you just like Crystal said, you are going to be hiring us down the road, asking if we can fix it. And we're going to just say, unfortunately, we can't. There's not much we can do. So, so make sure you really ask those questions about their um financial awareness and understanding of taxes, and so that you feel good about the attorney that is advocating for you, especially when it especially if you're a high asset family, you know, businesses or high income earning with RSUs and stock options. You really need to make sure you have an attorney that understands all of the financial repercussions of that so that. You don't get caught with something that is not good for you. I want to talk about just some common financial traps. What is a common financial trap that you um you've seen, Crystal?

SPEAKER_01 22:12

I think we already started to touch on this, but the house can be a really big trap for people. They fight emotionally for the house, for the neighborhood, for the place that their kids have grown up, and financially they just drown afterward. Divorce is expensive. You're splitting two families, and that's just not a good situation for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Can I just say something? Because we do get a lot of people that say, Oh, I want the house for my financial or my kids' stability. And there is something to say to that, but statistics have or studies have shown that the kids staying in their same schools is more impactful for their stability than staying in a home. In fact, kids find it very exciting to move homes because they get a new room, they get a new neighborhood, or we move all the time as families. And so I do want to point that out. Their school stability is more important than like their home stability. Another downfall of we see, Crystal, is litigation addiction. Like we get these people that just want to fight, fight to fight, spending tens of thousands of fighting over print principal. I I laugh and Crystal's heard me say it like 3,000 times. I'm going to say it again. But the difference between our $5,000 cases and our $100,000 cases are not the facts of the case. Most cases are pretty reasonable, and the facts are like I should be, you know, pretty amicable. But it always depends on opposing party and then their counsel that they choose. We know automatically by opposing counsel that a party has picked whether this case is going to go litigation heavy, which means it's going to get very, very expensive. Super frustrating, but we're always there to tell our clients that and to help put them, you know. Luckily, we're a very heavy litigation firm. All of our attorneys at our firm become experts in litigation and are able to help all of our clients if cases go to court.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

I would add to that too, as you're looking for an attorney. If you want this to go amicably, if you want this to go well, a lot of that does hinge on your attorney. And I would look for an attorney who's going to tell you the truth. We see a lot of cases where things keep fighting, probably because the attorney is not telling their client what's realistic and what's going to happen at trial. They're just saying yes to everything the client wants. And unfortunately, that's not really in your long-term best interest. It it keeps the attorney's law firm open for sure. It pays our bills, but it's not really in your best interest to have someone who's always going to tell you yes. You need someone who's going to say, actually, this is what the law says, and let's try and get to a settlement or something that's reasonable. Otherwise, things could just go on forever.

SPEAKER_00 24:44

I'm convinced that's why people don't hire us in our consultation. At least it makes me feel better, is because I just tell them the truth. I set the expectations pretty low in the fact that I make them recognize that the reality of their situation is not where they want it. And some people don't like that. And like I said, they're going to go find another attorney that's like, yeah, fine, I'll do whatever you want. So I absolutely agree with that, Crystal. Another thing, if you're looking for an attorney, I've already talked about understanding like the different kinds of ways money is, but really understanding taxes like retirement penalties, capital gains, support implications. One of the things in Utah, a marital balance sheet is imperative when you have assets within the marriage as well. And I think majority of attorneys wouldn't even know how to do a marital balance sheet. In fact, there are some attorneys that will like make you pay a forensic accountant to do basically a marital balance sheet and they're going to charge you $50,000 to do that when really it's just going through, you know, statements and being able to put this together. We do our own marital balance sheet. So I think that that's really important to look at. On top of like if you own your own business, if you own your own business, it's already coming with a whole sort of challenges. Usually most people, when they run a business themselves, it's a small like sole LLC. It's just ran with, you know, husband and wife, maybe there's all going to be problems because you're using the the marital funds and the business funds are completely commingled. And that's going to get you a lot of problems as well. So you want to really make sure that your attorney is well versed on that and can really talk you through the reality of the situation. Because if you come in to my to our consult and you say, Well, my business made $500,000 last year, but we only paid ourselves $30,000. So I can't pay alimony. I'm going to look at you and laugh because it's not reality and we know that, right? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 26:49

I would say over and over and over again, knowledge is power at every state of the marriage, whether you're just getting married now, whether you feel like you're struggling, but you want to make things work, whether you're getting to a point where you want to talk to a divorce attorney, the more you know, the more power you're gonna have in a divorce. And have your own bank account. Have access to those accounts with the passwords, all of those things are things you should work on early on before things start to break down. Access to your own credit and then a plan. Have a plan. A lot of people don't think past maybe the next five, 10 years in terms of what's gonna happen when the kids are grown up. What do I want to do when I grow up, so to speak? Thinking about what would be your backup plan if something were to happen to your spouse, whether it be a divorce or whether it be a death or something like that in your family. Having a plan and just having some ideas in your head can make it a little bit easier when those transitions come.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

I would absolutely agree with that. Um, I just wanted to touch on what does it mean to have your own bank account? It just means your own bank account with your name on it that your spouse isn't on. You could keep $50 in that for your entire marriage, but having your own bank account is a really important step. And it allows, if you're getting a divorce, to be able to then use it because you don't want to use your joint accounts. And then it is very important, whether you are married, newly getting married, or been married for a while, that you both have access to your own credit, which means that you should be if you even if you're a mom and you stay at home and you don't work, you should be put on loans, the mortgage or a car loan, or you know, a HELOC, a line of credit, so that you can be working on your credit as well. You're just as important. Having a plan means that your retirement plan should include you. Like just because he has a 401k at his at his work and that's your guys' one and only retirement plan. Well, first of all, most financial advisors would say that's not a very good retirement plan. But second of all, what's what does that look like for you? You should have a plan when it comes to the financial awareness of your marriage. And I believe, truly believe, here's your marriage advice from a divorce attorney. You should be having at least quarterly meetings, sitting down, talking about your finances, how much is owed on the house, how much debt do we have? What are we putting into retirement? And do we have a plan of being able to get to that 67 or whatever you're looking at as your retirement age? And does it include me? It's it's easy to say, oh, he has that much money in his 401k, but is that enough to support everything that you guys are doing? Those are the kind of things in your marriage that are gonna keep it healthy, keep it honest. And then if it unfortunately fails and you're showing up in my office, you're gonna be able to come with me with a big stack of everything and say, This is everything we own. This is, you know, what's in my name, what's in his name. And we're gonna be able to do what's necessary to divide it and and like we said, protect you.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

What a huge difference that makes to feel like during your marriage. And again, if something fails, and we're not here to say we're pro-divorce, you should be getting to that stage, but if something fails to have that knowledge, that just gives you a much stronger sense of security and helps relieve some of the emotional hurdles that are not necessary in a divorce, but are so, so common. If you have that information, if you have confidence that you know what's going on, it will alleviate so many troubles down the road.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

I so agree with that. And that's why financial literacy is so important. And we could probably talk about it in a marriage. I would love to mentor new kids getting married about the importance because when you get married and you're in 20s and you know, you're making barely 25 bucks an hour or whatever. This kind of stuff seems trivial, but it's those founding and building blocks in the beginning of your marriage that are going to create the you know pathway to a healthy and realistic marriage down the road. So, Crystal, I think this is a super important subject. I just absolutely adore you and appreciate you coming on this podcast. Any last words that you have for anybody that's listening to this?

SPEAKER_01 31:05

This is both a money conversation and an emotional conversation. Wherever you are, you're gonna be okay. Nobody dies from divorce. Know that there are people in a similar situation and there are steps you can take to get out of it. So, no matter how overwhelmed you feel about finances, if all of this makes you feel really triggered, just take one step at a time and you can get there. That's my message for everybody we talk to all the time.

SPEAKER_00 31:25

If anything, remember, divorce forces people to confront financial realities they may have avoided for years, but knowledge creates power. The smart financial decisions you make during divorce don't just impact the next six months, they shape your freedom, your stability, and peace for years to come. And I will always say it you deserve happiness, you deserve peace, you deserve love. Hang in there. Thanks, Crystal, for joining us on another episode of No One Dies from Divorce. Tune in next week. Thanks, Joe.