Alimony, 50/50, Prenups: The NoBS Divorce Money Playbook

Divorce is not just a life event. It is a wealth event. In this episode, I sit down with Certified Divorce Financial Analyst Jamie Lima to rip the cover off the myths that quietly drain people’s futures. We get practical, we get specific, and we stay honest about what it takes to walk away with your sanity and a plan.

We tackle the loud myths first. No, “never get married” isn’t a strategy. No, alimony is not always forever. Most states are moving toward rehabilitative support. We break down what actually drives alimony, how “income available for support” works, and why child support calculators are state-driven while alimony is often negotiated.

The 50/50 split sounds fair until taxes smash one side. House equity is not the same as a pre-tax 401(k). We lay out why “equal” on paper can be unequal in real life, and where people hemorrhage money by letting their attorney run the financials. Hint: your lawyer litigates. Your CDFA plans.

We map your first moves before you file. Get control of income, expenses, assets, liabilities. Pull statements. Secure logins. Freeze accounts if needed. Run your credit with all three bureaus. Build your team: a divorce-savvy planner, a competent attorney, a therapist, and a support circle that actually shows up.

We close with mindset and tools. Act like the CEO of your life. Don’t fight by email. Don’t let bullies run the process. Jamie previews Secure Split, a toolkit and coming platform to help you model alimony, child support, pensions, taxes, and more with clean data and better decisions. Watch the full conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/43jqa-gDOgY

As always we ask you to comment, DM, whatever it takes to have a conversation to help you take the next step in your journey, reach out on any platform!

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DISCLOSURE: Awards and rankings by third parties are not indicative of future performance or client investment success. Past performance does not guarantee future results. All investment strategies carry profit/loss potential and cannot eliminate investment risks. Information discussed may not reflect current positions/recommendations. While believed accurate, Black Mammoth does not guarantee information accuracy. This broadcast is not a solicitation for securities transactions or personalized investment advice. Tax/estate planning information is general - consult professionals for specific situations. Full disclosures at www.blackmammoth.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Why divorce is a wealth event
• 2:00 Survival mode vs planning for life after divorce
• 5:00 Myths: alimony forever, “never marry,” bad advice online
• 8:00 How alimony really works and what drives it
• 10:00 The 50/50 split trap and the tax drag nobody talks about
• 12:00 Why attorneys shouldn’t run the money
• 14:00 Prenups and postnups as “marriage insurance”
• 17:00 What a CDFA actually does in divorce strategy
• 21:00 Where people lose the most money in divorce
• 23:00 Emotional traps that sabotage smart decisions
• 27:00 Build your team and protect your health
• 31:00 Standing up to bullies and mindset shifts
• 33:00 Secure Split preview: new tools for divorce planning

Transcript

Jamie Lima: 0:22

Well then it's time.

Stoy: 0:29

Divorce. What a, what a what a great topic to talk about, right? Everyone sees it has been involved with it this time. I think the divorce rate's over 51% at this point in time. So like we all know about it, but what do we really know about it? Do we know about the arguments? Do we know about the splitting of assets? Do we know about the emotions? I don't think we truly do. And so today, Jamie's on with us again, of course, uh, to dive through the divorce and what that looks like and what it's about. And we'll get into what society, media, maybe you, you people out there are saying how Jamie and his team deal with it from their point of view, and then some actionable steps if you're going through that as well. So Jay, without further ado, welcome back. And this topic came to me'cause I have a client going through a divorce currently as we speak. So it made sense that, hey, let's get into it. I know that when we get into recession type talks and, and money issues in the, in the society, divorce rates also pop at the same time. So what better conversation to be had before we get into the crazy side of the fall?

Jamie Lima: 1:35

Yeah, man, I, I, I appreciate you having me on again. It's good to see you and good to, uh, talk to your listeners again.

Stoy: 1:42

For sure. Well, let's, let's get into the topic, so, yep. I, I'll pose this question or pose this statement in this way. Divorce is a wealth event, not just a life event. What would you say

Jamie Lima: 1:56

to that? I would 100% agree and, and the reason why I say that is because it's either gonna make it or it's gonna break it, and it can make it, if you're. Strategic and you get your ducks in a row and you keep yourself organized and you make good, solid, practical, pragmatic decisions through the, through the divorce. And you can set, you can get through this and set yourself up for success on the other side. I see it time and time again, and then I see it on the other end, right? And we deal with this even in our traditional wealth management. Practices that we, we all work in. And I've been working in that space for 20 years now. Man. I mean, like the people that don't, that just go at it and they think their attorney's just gonna handle it all. Those are the ones that have a problem with wealth later on. That's, that's just been my experience.

Stoy: 2:43

What are some, I guess, things that people don't really prepare for in a divorce until it really truly is too late? Like,

Jamie Lima: 2:51

go ahead. No, I, I think it's, it's, they don't really think through what the, what life on the other side is gonna look like. And it's, it's, it's hard enough as someone who's been through this experience, it's hard enough thinking like, I'm going to drop the D word and I'm gonna ask for the divorce, and I'm gonna shake up the family and I'm gonna lose relationships, and I'm gonna impact my existing family and my relationship there and all these things. It's like you, you're just, you're literally almost in. Like this constant fight or flight mode. And I, I felt that, and we can get into the, the what happened to me personally and and so on in my experience, but you're just trying to survive, right? You literally are in the survival mode. So thinking about what do I want to do five years from now? What do I want that life to look like and what do I want my kids' lives to look like and do I want to, you know, am I gonna be paying for college and all, like, those are those. Decisions are on the back burner, and the challenge with that and not thinking that through. As difficult as it is, is you start making decisions as you're going through the divorce process that don't line up with your ability to do the things that you actually wanna do with yourself. When we're working with our clients in a traditional retirement planning, investment management scenario, it's all these amazing, we're thinking about all these amazing things like, when can I retire? Can I retire early and do I wanna retire to an island? And all these things, and we can help them put a plan in place to do that because it's all warm, fuzzy stuff, right? It makes us feel good and. People are excited about that. Divorce is sometimes the complete opposite, so it can really jam people up. Yeah.

Stoy: 4:30

Right. Absolutely. And I think that's one of the points, obviously we'll get to that when we talk about your point of view and what your firm actually does. Um, but I think that's a great intro into it. I want to hit upon kind of the hot topics, so I've got a list of them that I want to talk about, but what do you hear? Since you are in it, this is what you do, right? This is your, your thing. What do you see out there in the social webs and all the things that people are talking about that may or may not be a myth or may or may not be true when it comes to divorce? The wealth side, the emotional side. What are some things that you hear and see?

Jamie Lima: 5:05

That's a great question. There's a lot of myths out there. You know, there's, there's a lot of bad information, misinformation, I should say. People that don't have the experience that are, that are. Sharing information that probably shouldn't. One of the, one of the number one comment I get, TikTok Instagram, you name it, is you should never get married. That's gonna solve all the problems, right? It's gonna solve all our problems. We should just never get married. And I don't, I don't agree with that at all. Right? And the other, the then, then usually the next comment that that person makes is, I got stuck paying alimony forever. And, and or people think they're going to be, they're gonna receive alimony forever. And that's just not the case either. Like not getting married is not the answer. And if you get married, you shouldn't be concerned about having to pay alimony forever. Spousal support, different verbiage in different, different states. One of, I think that's one of the biggest myths is people think that the days where if you get married and you have a spouse that stays home, takes care of the kids. You're gonna be on the hook for alimony, spousal support for the like forever. Most states are no longer going that direction. I'm in California and it's one of the more liberal states as it relates to this, but even California is cracking down on this, where it is now going to more of a rehabilitative scenario. So meaning the whole purpose of alimony is to get you back on your feet so you can move on to the next phase of your life, and it's the end of it. Historically it wasn't always like that. Sometimes it was permanent and, and that it just, it's just changing now. And a lot of the states are really, really cracking down on this. So I think, you know, the, you know, there's just a lot of noise out there. Number one that I see all the time is, is around alimony. Trust me, as somebody who wrote a check for six years, it hurt 72 checks. Man. I wrote 72 checks. I, I, I, I actually was, uh, 144'cause it, it was twice a month. So for six years it was a, it hurt. But to say like, not getting married is the answer. And then if you, if you're gonna, if you think you're gonna receive alimony, you have to pay alimony forever. That's another myth that's out there. That's just bogus.

Stoy: 7:27

And there's a lot of equation that kind of goes into the alimony side too. Like, yeah, we, we don't need to get into, don't get married thing.'cause that's, that's just, but the alimony's a big one because it's, it's not as clean, it's not as clear cut. Right. If you get, if you're married for five years compared to 20, 25 years, like the equation in the state matters. Right. So how do you preliminarily talk through your clients with that of like, Hey, yeah, like. This could be a, a route, but it's not permanent. However, it's not zero either.

Jamie Lima: 8:01

Once we get a a, a, a better understanding of the client's financial situation and also the other side's financial situation because it's all predicated on. The income available for support. That's the biggest key here. Income available for support. So think of it this way, al, how alimony it works out is it's very arbitrary. There's, there are only a few states that actually have a calculator that will tell you down to the dollar what, what is owed you owed to you. Everything else is very much very. There's a lot, your, your attorney's gonna have to do a pretty good job if you think you're gonna get alimony, right? Um, so we're gonna talk a little bit about some of the tools and resources that we're developing in that respect as well. But think of it this way, is you have one spouse that takes all their money and puts it on the center of the table, and you have the other spouse that takes all of their income and puts it in the center of the table. We deduct for their expenses and your expenses, and then we look at what's left over. Yeah, and there's a formula based on length of length of the marriage and, and then there's also some aspect of like, it's very, again, arbitrary, like the contributions to the marriage, you know those, and you are really looking at that income, which is usually very finite. That's available for support and that's usually what's used for, for that support. Now child support's a little bit different'cause every state has a calculator, but alimony is, is very different, which is why we're, we're. Designing, we actually built a calculator for people to use to get guesstimations as far as what they're in their, their particular state, what that's gonna look like.

Stoy: 9:28

Yeah. I've seen it and hear it often of people just saying like, Hey, just split it 50 50 and move on. Like how many of the cases you've dealt with, is it really truly that easy just to go, you know what, here's the line split. We're off.

Jamie Lima: 9:40

Well that, that makes sense. But the one thing that people think about a lot, uh, miss a lot of the times is they forget the impact that taxes have on these situations. And, you know, I'm in, I'm in California 50 50 State. If you're, if, if you went to a judge tomorrow and said, here's all my stuff, we just want to divide it 50 50, they're gonna look at it, stamp it, and move on. What they're not taking into consideration of all the other components of this one big one is the tax situation because your, if you have$500,000 in your 401k at work and your spouse wants to keep, you have$500,000 in equity in your home and your spouse wants to keep that property, that judge is going to look at it and go, 500,000,$500,000. Get outta my courtroom. But they're not taking into consideration the impact that taxes are gonna have when you take withdrawals outta that 401k later. And the benefits on the tax side of when you sell the property for your capital gains, exclusions, and everything else that come into play. So it's not really, it's definitely not apples to apples. It's apples and oranges in many ways. And this is the big, the one that I miss, people miss all the time. And it's just not that simple.

Stoy: 10:52

No, it's not. It truly isn't, let alone the emotional side and then like one spouse works, one doesn't. You've got all of that into it, but it's not it. I've never really seen it as split 50 50. Like my current clients, we are as 50, 50 as I think you can possibly get, but there's still those little caveats. That are there.

Jamie Lima: 11:10

Yeah. Yeah. And some of it's what, what is gonna be best for that, that client given their goals and objectives. Right. That's why there is, even though we're focused on the, a lot of the decisions that people have to make in the divorce and, and make good decisions during the, during the, during that process, we also have to get an understanding of what their future goals are. We kind of talked about this in, in the intro here, but if, if there's a practical reason to keep the 401k versus the house. Maybe it's not gonna be, maybe it's gonna be 60 40 and they're gonna be okay with that. Right? So there's all these other, it's just, it really is so arbitrary. That's why we have to come in and, and we layer in that financial planning and some of the decision making and the goal setting and everything else with. Strategy,

Stoy: 11:55

you'll get a kick outta this one.'cause this one, um, when I, when I saw this one, it made me laugh too. What, just let the lawyers handle the money. They'll figure out what's best for you guys. Yeah, yeah,

Jamie Lima: 12:04

yeah. When was the last time you had a, a lo an attorney As a financial planning client and they knew anything about the savings and the money that they have and their, their, their financial plan in general. And then you're gonna tell, then that same attorney is supposed to go help you decide who's gonna keep what and what the, what Most fair and equitable way of dividing up your assets is in the divorce. They can't even manage your own money.

Stoy: 12:28

I'm close

Jamie Lima: 12:29

now, and I, I'll say that with all due respect, because I have a lot of clients that, I have a lot of relationships with attorneys. I have some, some of my best friends of attorneys. But let me tell you, when you peel back the young and they don't know 401k plan from an IRA or anything in between.

Stoy: 12:44

You're not wrong.

Jamie Lima: 12:45

It's the reality

Stoy: 12:47

you gotta have, whether it's your advisor or another planner, like don't let your attorneys handle it. That is not their role. There are certain roles in this whole situation.

Jamie Lima: 12:55

You, you don't go to the pediatrician and get your kid's teeth cleaned. Right. So why would you have your attorney handle everything? Like there's a reason why there's specialist exists.

Stoy: 13:06

Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, let's see, one other one as we get into it. Prenups are only for the rich. Now this one's interesting because I didn't come from money, right? I would've grown up thinking that prenups are only for the rich, like that's all you hear of, right? Um, celebrity sports, et cetera. That's what we hear. But why don't you educate us a little bit about that?

Jamie Lima: 13:32

I literally, in about an hour ago, had, was on another podcast, and her specialization was prenups. So we talked about it the entire time. I, I cannot, now that I'm, now that I'm in this world. I cannot say enough about the benefit of a prenup, and it is not just for the rich. Now, don't get me wrong, if you're just starting off and you're, you just, you know, you just graduated college and you're marrying your high school sweetheart, and you guys don't have any assets and you're building this life together and you're starting from ground zero, different story. You probably don't need to spend the money for, for that type of thing just yet. That's why there's postnup. But as far as a prenup goes, you know, at, at, you probably don't need to spend the money on it, simply because in most states, whatever wealth you build along the way is gonna be considered a marital asset and subject to division anyway. But if you're, if you're in a situation where maybe you have an, you have a, a great career and you've started saving for retirement. You maybe have an inheritance from grandma and grandpa, whatever it is, and, and you, you've started to build some, some wealth. It doesn't have to be, we're not talking about seven digits here. We're talking about, you know, just a little bit of wealth here. Spending a little bit of money on that prenup is incredibly important. Not only does it set the pave the way for your future moving forward, but it also allows you to have a conversation and, and, and come into an agreement with your soon to be spouse or your, or your new spouse on how things are gonna go and what some of your beliefs are related to money and what their beliefs are related to money and how you can help one another in each of those respects. Right? And'cause we all, we each have a different money story. You feel differently about money than I do. Even we, we've kind of grew up with a similar background and which is why we do the work we do, right. With not really having a lot of money. But I think even, even that being said, we still have different money stories and I think everybody does. And, and when you're trying to blend those two money stories together in a marriage, it can be incredibly difficult. So, and the reason we don't talk about this and, and so few people have a prenup in place. It's simply because it's doesn't give us the warm and fuzzies. It's an icky subject. Nobody wants to talk about it. And who wants to think about the, the relationship and the person that they're with dissolving one day. Nobody wants to go down that path. But we have, we don't wanna think about our home burning down. We don't wanna think about getting in a car accident. We don't wanna think about us passing away, or our loved one's passing away. But we have homeowner's insurance, we have auto insurance, we have life insurance. Why would we not have marriage insurance? And that's all a preop really is. So if we kind of, if we change the frame, I think, I think more people are gonna benefit from it.

Stoy: 16:12

Absolutely. Uh, could not agree more. Well, let's get into your point of view, uh, what you do as a firm as well. So let's first start, although we do have a previous episode, everyone go on the bio, on the website and check everything out. However, I wanna start with what do you actually do as A-C-D-F-A? How it truly helps people.'cause they see that and they're like, what the hell is that?

Jamie Lima: 16:35

Yeah.

Stoy: 16:36

Talk us through that.

Jamie Lima: 16:37

Yeah. I wish there was more education about the work we do because I think when you combine the efforts of A-C-D-F-A, A Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, with the efforts of a good attorney, we can get most people through their case on the other, onto the other side. With more money in their pocket and with less stress And, and so the work that we do, and everybody knows the work that attorneys do, but the work that we do as think of us like the financial planner with a specialization in all the financial nuances of divorce. Dividing up assets, handling the alimony component of it, child support calculations, even pension valuations will go a lot of people in our world. For whatever reason, I'm seeing more pensions than I've seen in my 20 year career working with people that I go through divorce. I thought these people were a dying breed, right? Not so much anymore. I think it's a,'cause we work with a lot of military and first responders and so on. I think that's where that, that comes from. But we'll help with people with pension, uh, evaluations and so on. And we work with the attorney on the strategy. So in other words, we basically we're, we'll, we'll organize the financial information, we'll help the client set goals for the divorce, and figure out like, okay, like what do we want to keep? What are we okay with giving up? What are some of the priorities that we have and, and how do we. Like we mentioned earlier, set themselves up for success once the divorce is finalized, like budgeting, cash flow and those types of things. But while we're taking them through the divorce, we've organized their financial information. We'll even go as far as printing out the financial affidavits that they need to send to the courts and organized and getting them all that dialed in for the courts, I think we're the, we're the magic bullet or the, the holy grail. In our, in our, the work that we do is in that combined effort with the attorney. Where we, we'll literally draft out a, a document for the attorney that basically says like, retirement account, here's what we have, here's what we found related to the retirement account. Here's what's rightfully due to this client, and here are our recommendations. And literally write it down for the client. It can be two pages long, it can be 20 pages long, but we'll draft that document so there's a tangible report that goes to the attorney and that helps with the negotiations. It also helps in mediation. In most states, you're going to have to go through mediation when it, when you get close to finalizing the divorce or even as part of the process where maybe you just wanna mediate and you don't even wanna litigate. We will work with our clients and make sure that they're dialed in for that mediation. So they have a strategy, they know how to handle themselves and conduct themselves in the mediation and think what to say, what not to say. But they also have a blueprint of like, okay, when it comes to the house, this is what we're gonna ask for and this is why. Here, like here are non-negotiables, here are the things you're okay with giving up and so on. And I, and it's really in many ways a financial coach through the divorce process. That might be the simplest way to put it,

Stoy: 19:29

and I would assume, right? Here's me, assuming might make an ass of myself. But I would assume because you're doing all that heavy lifting, that the attorneys aren't, and I would assume you're not charging$800 an hour like their attorney probably is. Mm-hmm. So it not only does it do better work for them, it makes the entire thing more efficient and in probably the long term, saves them more money because of that.

Jamie Lima: 19:52

It's, it's like anything else, right? Like if you have the expert doing the expert thing. You don't have somebody who is not the expert trying to do that expert thing, it's gonna be much more effective and efficient and we're gonna save much more. I mean, we can go, I've, how many at this stage mean like, come on. Like how many Fidelity brokerage account statements have we seen? I can read a Fidelity brokerage accounts in like 10 seconds. They're flipping through it. They don't know where to go. They don't even, like, they don't know who are the, like who does this company clear through? Who does this company clear? Like they don't know any of that stuff. Which, and it's, it's not, it's not their fault. They're just not trained in this tight line of work. You know, I could go change my oil in my car, but I can also pull up the Jiffy Lube and get it done in 15 minutes. Right? Instead of laying on my back in my driveway, getting covered in oil and probably swearing for 45 minutes while I try to do it.'cause I can't get a bolt off or this, that and the other. It's like, it's just, it's, it's a simple analogy, but that's exactly where we come in is we're, we're doing the work much more faster and efficient and at a lower rate hourly than the attorney is, and you're gonna keep more money in your pocket that way. So

Stoy: 20:58

your point of view, where do most, where do people lose the most money in a divorce situation?

Jamie Lima: 21:04

I think it just goes back to what we just said, man, like thinking your attorney's gonna handle everything and listen. So I, I made the same mistake myself. I was 13, almost 14 years into my financial planning career, and I basically said, here's the money, here's all my information. Run with it. Let me know what I need to do next. And for a year and a half, I let him tell me what to do. And. Which just goes to show you that I'm not perfect and I made a ton of mistakes along the way. And now my job is to make sure other people don't do the same thing.'cause I burned so much money just doing that, like thousands upon thousands of dollars on. Well, we'll send this email and let me send another, let me, let me call the other side and see what they think about this thing. And attorneys, again, this is not a 45 minutes of me bashing attorneys here, but let's just educate people on this. They are litigators by trade. They're not mediators by trade. So there's a, there's a big difference. And if you mediate, you're gonna keep less, more money in your pocket If you litigate, that's when the gloves come off and the, and the bills go up. So I think that's where people waste the most money.

Stoy: 22:11

What have you seen in terms of, I guess we'll call'em emotional traps, but emotional things that have sabotaged smart decisions in a divorce proceeding?

Jamie Lima: 22:21

It's letting, letting the emotions dictate your decisions. When you're going through a divorce, you now have to be the CEO of your life. And if you look at it from a bi, like look at it from the lens of a business, you have one party who came together with another party who signed a contract saying that they were gonna be together. That contract is now almost null and void. We're trying to figure out a way to dissolve that contract. If you look and, and that's, that's really all it is. So if you operate like a business person, like you were the CEO of your own company, you're gonna make much more, much better decisions. Practical, pragmatic, where I see people go off the rails is every time they, they have a question for their attorney, it's War and Peace email, or they're sending me a 15 paragraph text message to give me context. I'm like, this is not what we need. Because it takes money to re, it takes. Burns money to read that, and it takes money to respond. And nine times outta 10, it doesn't have anything to do with the case. It's just a therapy session for that person allowing to get emotions. Invol. If you let emotions get involved and not think with a, a CEO's mindset, you're gonna spend a lot more money than than you need to anyway.

Stoy: 23:33

That's just good advice in general.

Jamie Lima: 23:36

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Stoy: 23:36

Specifically in this situation. Okay. Let's get to some actionable steps now. People have listened to us Ram on, they probably never wanna hire attorneys again, which is fair. Although I love giving attorneys shit. It's, it's just the nature of the game. Let's get to some actionable steps that they can take from, from today's conversation. Let's first start, what should they do to prepare before they file? What are documents they need to get? What are steps they need to take? Before they, they specifically file for divorce.

Jamie Lima: 24:06

I tell people there's four things all the time, right? You wanna know what's coming in, what's going out, what you owe and what you own. It's really those four things. Income expenses, assets and liabilities. You can do it on a legal pad, you can do it on a spreadsheet, whatever, whatever's easiest for you. You just want to get an understanding of what's coming in, what's going out, what I own, and what I owe. If you can organize that information and then get that to someone like us, you're, you're like 75% of the way there. And if you can start that early, it's, it's advantageous. And I'll tell you why. Because what we see happen a lot of times is financial abuse. Once we, once we've dropped the hammer or we've told the other side that we wanted a divorce or they've told us. They've now changed their logins and passwords, so all of your joint accounts, they've closed accounts or they've opened new accounts, or they've moved money around, and all those things. If you're thinking this is where you're gonna go, you're headed months leading up to this, that final, that, that hammer coming down, you want to organize an information while you still have access to all of these things. If you, if you're too late for that. I would be marching myself down to the Schwab office, the Fidelity office. I mean, Vanguard at this, in this stage is the only one that's online, right? Um, I mean, you can call up and get access to your accounts and username, reset usernames and passwords and all that stuff. A lot of people are like, well, I don't have access to it anymore. It's like, okay, well is it a joint account? Yeah, it's a joint account. Okay, well then march yourself down there and get access to it because you have, it's rightfully yours. So you need to get all that information, uh, ahead of time. Tax records, mortgage information, insurance information. All that stuff needs to be organized prior to, because I, I see it time and time again where people lose access to that and then it becomes a headache.

Stoy: 25:57

And if you didn't right, say you didn't. Mm-hmm. I would call all of them and let'em know what's happening, including your a hundred percent. Give them a warning, give them a note because Yeah, I've seen it. Money moves, it gets hidden. You can't find it, but you knew it was there and there's no records of it. So make sure, and you can

Jamie Lima: 26:13

freeze those accounts. Yeah, you can let the, you can let just, just like in the situation of a death, you can call up Fidelity and say, Hey, we're going through a divorce. I think there's some financial abuse going on. And put that on record'cause it's all recorded on a recorded line. And, and you, you line in the sand and then what happens after that is up to is now on the onus, is on Fidelity and Schwab and those other companies and, and a lot of them are not gonna, they're not gonna play games. So they're not gonna let big transactions happen, things of that nature. Um, the other thing you can do too is go to annual credit report.com and pull a credit report for all three credit bureaus. I think you can do that like once a month Now. It used to be once a week. Now, now you can do it once a month, but, um, it's still free. And you wanna pull a copy of that report so you can get, uh, an understanding of what liabilities are on your credit report at that point too.

Stoy: 26:59

Absolutely. Who should be on your divorce team and when should they be on your divorce team?

Jamie Lima: 27:05

I'm, I'm a big fan of creating this team. You, for yourself. I, I, I, of course, am a bias, so I would say, you know, you want to have a financial planner of some sort on your team. Uh, I, I feel like having a, having someone with a specialization divorce is gonna be much more advantageous than having, you know, your. You know, your, your dad's retirement guy helping you with this. So there's that ob a lot of people that we work with need attorneys because they can't get through it through mediation, so they need the legal help, but you can't forget about the other people that are important in these, in these particular cases. And that's your family therapists. Right. Your, your, um, your loved ones, friends and family, all those people need to, you need to surround yourself with that team, you that are gonna be there to support you, not only on a financial but legal side, but on an emotional side as well. And that story was one of my, my biggest mistakes, aside from I made a thousand of them, let's just face it right. I made a thousand mistakes in my own divorce disaster, but I learned a lot. And one of the things I learned was. Pushing those people away that are there to support you and help you and wrap their arms around you when you need them most, when you need them most. Pushing them away is not, is not the way to go about it. You know, I'm here in California, good majority of my family's on the East coast and I didn't want, you know, I'm 47 years old and, but I'm my, I'm still always gonna be my mom's baby boy. I didn't want her worrying about me from 3000 miles away, what was going on and how the divorce was going. And was I okay? I was like, yeah, I got it. You know, just hang out. And that was a big mistake. So, so you could ever surround yourself with, with as much support as you possibly can.

Stoy: 28:46

This might be a piggyback action step for you or a question for you, but like, what should you protect immediately, both physically and emotionally? What should be that first thing that you protect?

Jamie Lima: 29:03

I, I think if I had to do it all over again, I would've let my loved ones know what was happening. I would've, I would've put'em on notice. So I would, that would've helped. From an emotional perspective, we've talked a lot about the financials, so I think there's, we, we don't really need to belabor that, but you know, we've already talked a lot of the steps that we're talking about. The action items that we're talking about can be, be helpful from a financial perspective. I also think you need to pro protect your physical. A lot more than maybe the other two. Um, I, um, I used to run 50 to 70 miles a week. My passion first time and took me just, I'm not asking for kudos here, but I'm sharing this as an example. I just ran my first half marathon Sunday in eight years,'cause it took me eight years. From a physical perspective to like it because it will suck the life out of you and you're dealing with all the stress of like, you're trying to build a business and you've got the kids and you've got this going on and that going on. Your attorney needs more money. You know, like there's this, it's this pile on, pile on, pile on, and I let the physical aspect. Take a back seat. I mean, there was a point, dude, where I couldn't even walk down my mailbox. We're in a more rural area, so like my mailbox is about a half away from our, uh, half a mile away from our house. I couldn't even run to our mailbox because it just sucked the life out of me along the way. So if we, you know, your money doesn't mean anything. Your loved ones don't mean anything if you're not here to enjoy them. So you've gotta, you've gotta watch the fun physical as well.

Stoy: 30:43

Last one, and I, I don't know how to question it per se, but think back through your experience, think back through experiences some of your clients, has there been a mind shift, mindset shift for you that's made the biggest difference between what you went through and that what you're able to teach your, uh, your clients?

Jamie Lima: 31:14

It's a good question. The first thing I thought about when, when you finished a question was, do you ever hear of a band called Third Eye Blind? Yeah. One of my favorite bands. That's how old I am, dude. But, uh, and they're still, they're still alive and kicking door. They're still, they're still crushing it. But, um, they have a, they have a line in the, in the, in one of their songs that says, um. Something to the effect of like back down that bully to the back of the bus because it's time for them to be scared of us. And I think about that in a lot of these cases that I'm working on because a lot of the, I'll just, I'll just, this is not to be sexist, but 90, 90 plus percent of the cases we work, we work with are women who don't have, are, were not the financial breadwinners in the family and, and and so on. Were, and they are getting bullied left and right by their soon to be ex spouse. And it bothers me, like I'm almost getting emotional thinking about it right now, now that we're talking about it. But it really bothers me that people think that they can do that to someone that they supposedly loved. And in my situation, I was getting bullied all the time before I left the house. It was, I am gonna make this as expensive and as painful as I possibly can, and at every turn. That promise was held and, and I let myself get bullied a lot instead of just standing my ground and just, and I think if there's one lesson to be taken outta this entire conversation is you deserve to have the life that you want to have for you and your, your, your kids. If you have kids or whatever, and your, just for yourself, um, and, and being bullied. It is, it is time to back down that bully to the back of the bus. And I, I think about that a lot in these cases.

Stoy: 33:00

That's, that's powerful. Uh, thanks for sharing that one. But it's powerful. Also, people, that means you need Jamie and his team because he's been through it. He's seen it. That's exactly what they do. Can you enlighten us just a little bit of what you got coming down the pipe? I know we're gonna have an episode when you do launch, but like, can you talk a little bit about what's going on and tease everybody?

Jamie Lima: 33:20

Yeah, well we've got, we've got a pretty big endeavor that I've been working on project that I've been working on for about six or eight months now, and the project is called Secure Split. And in the world that we work in, we. Use financial planning software because we don't wanna just use spreadsheets and whatnot. The software that we use right now, I won't say the name'cause I don't wanna bash them, but it is very antiquated. Uh, the user experience is not great. Clients can't access the records. Um, there's no linking of accounts like we would use in our traditional financial planning software that we would use in a a. Regular planning engagement. Um, so we're building that right now for professionals, so attorneys, mediators, c dfas, like ours, ourselves. Um, early 2026, we'll actually have a fully functioning MVP product. Uh, we're starting in the state of California because that's where our home state is and there's a lot of divorces here. And then we're gonna bolt on states as we go along with additional com, uh, capabilities, like some of the things we talked about, tax situations and pension, VA calculations, and so on. All that stuff will be coming. Hopefully to replace family law software for professionals right now though. Uh, so we're in beta testing right now. As a matter of fact, today I'm gonna send the email to the beta testers that they have access. Um, so we've been making changes as we go and, and, um, uh, building that out for probably the next couple of years.'cause it's gonna take a little while. Right now for, for consumers, we have a, a secure split toolkit that, uh, consumers can access@toolkit.secure split.com. I'm sure you're gonna put the link in the show notes for us, but there users can, uh, do get. Calculations on child support, alimony, there's a budgeting tool in there and they can pay for some premium calculators, like things like the Quadro, some tax situation, tax calculations and, and some other things. So it's a free, free toolkit that people can use to get just educated, right, because they don't teach you this stuff in school. So we're trying to do our part.

Stoy: 35:09

I don't teach anybody this let's, I love it. Wait to, to showcase it, right? So all those listening that you're like, Hey, what is this? We'll have a whole demo. We'll do the whole thing when he gets it going. So appreciate you and everything that you do. You know, keep pounding that. Everyone else, obviously, you know where to reach out to him. You know how to reach out to us if you need something, please just ask. We can't help you if you don't reach out and have some conversations. So appreciate it. You, uh, keep doing what you're doing and look forward to talking with you soon.

Jamie Lima: 35:39

Alright man.

Stoy: 35:39

See ya.

Black Mammoth: 35:55

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