Divorce Rich Book Club: Leah Hadley, CDFA, on Intentional Money

Leah Hadley’s Intentional Money invites women to rethink their relationship with money and build wealth in a way that supports the life they truly want. Drawing from years of experience helping women navigate career shifts, divorce, caregiving, and reinvention, Hadley introduces the Intentional Money Method™—a framework built on clarity, values, mindset, strategy, action, and support. Instead of chasing someone else’s definition of financial success, readers learn how to align earning, spending, saving, investing, and giving with what matters most.

Through relatable stories and practical guidance, Intentional Money helps women move from financial anxiety and avoidance to confidence and purpose. This empowering guide shows how small, intentional choices can create stability, freedom, and peace—so money becomes a tool for living well, not a source of pressure.

To purchase Leah's book, click the link below!

https://amzn.to/4rjYubz

To find Leah online, use the links below.

• The  Empowered Sisterhood:
• https://www.watchherthrive.co/empowered-sisterhood
• Watch Her Thrive You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@watchherthrive
• Watch Her Thrive on IG: https://www.instagram.com/watchherthrive
• Intentional Divorce Solutions:
• Website:

Center for Financial Planning
Striving to Improve Lives Through Financial Planning Done Right! https://www.centerfinplan.com/

DAWN
Divorce Attorneys for Women: Michigan's Original Divorce Attorneys for Michigan

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Visit us at https://www.roesslerdivorce.com/ to learn more about Jacki's practice and to find valuable resources for your case.

The Divorce Rich podcast is proudly sponsored by Center for Financial Planning: Striving to Improve Lives through Financial Planning Done Right! https://www.centerfinplan.com/

Transcript

Welcome And What Rich Means

SPEAKER_03 0:08

Welcome to the Divorce Rich Podcast. I'm your host, Jackie Ressler. I've been a certified divorce financial analyst for 28 years, helping clients and their attorneys navigate the often complex and confusing financial issues in divorce. If you're in the process of or considering divorce, now is the time for you to take a deep breath and give yourself permission to find clarity on the financial issues you're facing. Rich means many things to many people. I believe the best definition of being rich is someone who has access to many resources. Along with my guests on this podcast, I will be bringing you a wide variety of information so that you can make sound and informed financial decisions for your financial future. Hey, if you're recently divorced or still in the middle of it, you already know life can feel like it's been turned upside down. And let's be honest, the financial part is overwhelming, confusing, and often the last thing that you want to deal with. That's why I want to tell you about the independent wealth management team at the Center for Financial Planning. Their team of certified financial planners specializes in helping people just like you navigate life changes with confidence. Whether it's assessing your new financial circumstances, creating or updating your retirement plan, or helping you adjust to the new normal, they'll work with you to get a clear, customized plan to feel in control and move forward with confidence. So if you're interested in working with a financial planner that you can trust to have your best interest in mind, and you're ready to take the next step, visit centerfinplan.com at centerfinplan.com and schedule a conversation. Center for Financial Planning.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Live your plan. Disclosure. Securities offered through Raymond James Financial Services Inc. Member Fenbre, S I P C Investment Advisory Services offered through Center for Financial Planning, Inc. Center for Financial Planning Inc. is not a registered broker dealer and is independent of Raymond James Financial Services. Center for Financial Planning was a sponsor of the Divorce Rich Podcast. The Center for Financial Planning and Raymond James are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Divorce Rich Podcast.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Hi everyone and welcome back to the Divorce Rich Podcast. Today I feel really lucky and excited to have as my guest Leah Hadley, who is the founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions and Intentional Wealth Partners, but she's so much more than that. And I have known Leah for quite a while. She is a very well-known CDFA. She has a fantastic practice, very successful, and she has a new book coming out. So I am so excited to welcome Leah today.

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Thank you so much for having me, Jackie. It is my absolute pleasure to be here with you.

SPEAKER_03 3:29

I want to hear about your new book. I know that you said you had said when we talked that this is your passion project. So what was the inspiration for it?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

So one of the things that I've looked at for years, Jackie, is just why some people are very successful in building wealth almost effortlessly, right? And why some people just struggle paycheck to paycheck and just can't get ahead. And I've really been looking at this for most of my career. My undergraduate degree, a lot of people don't realize I didn't go straight into finance. So my undergraduate degree is in sociology. I did a tremendous amount of quantitative research. And I am an analyst at heart. So I love, I love to analyze and look for patterns and things like that. Um I've been looking at this and I really just feel like there are some places that traditional financial services has just kind of missed the mark when it comes to supporting women in particular in building wealth. And, you know, a lot of kind of traditionally, what do we assume when it comes to wealth accumulation is a linear path, right? You go out, you get a job, you save what you can, right? You don't spend it all, you don't accumulate debt. And as long as you keep saving consistently and working consistently, um, then at some point you're able to retire and you've kind of created this wealth for yourself. That's not really what we see in practice, right? Okay. Women take time out for their careers. They take time out to support their children or their aging parents, or people lose jobs. I mean, we have seen so much job loss in the last 18 months. Like there's all these things, all these transitions. People get married, people get divorced, they get remarried, they lose a loved one that they didn't plan to lose, right? So when it comes to financial planning, all of these different life factors are impacting how we build, create, and protect our wealth. And what I kept seeing over and over and over again was people who just felt like they were hitting a wall. Like, why are we so stuck? Why can't we get ahead? And so when I started to really dig into it, I did a lot of reading, just kind of paying attention to what I was saying in my practice. There were a few things that really stood out to me. The first one that comes up in divorce over and over and over again is just having clarity around what is my financial situation. Not even having that clarity. How are you going to make decisions if you don't know what you're deciding about? Right. Um, and so clarity is really the first pillar of the intentional money method that I talk about in the book, but it is the one that surprised me in my career in in terms of how few people have true clarity around their financial situation. And that really is what drove my passion.

SPEAKER_03 6:08

I think it's got to be a very small percentage. Even the people that are that in the what I have found over my career, people that are do the money manager, the decision maker, even they don't have a good concept usually of clarity around their own finances. I want to make sure that we, everyone listening, hears the title of your book. So the title of your book is what?

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah, the main title is Intentional Money. Intentional money.

SPEAKER_03 6:36

I love it. Okay. So there are six pillars that you developed of intentional money.

Pillar One Clarity About Numbers

Values As A Financial Compass

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Yeah. So it's kind of like the um, you know, I think a lot of people want a prescription. You know, they want me to say, like, do X, Y, and Z, and this is what the result is gonna be. And that's do that. That's right. That's just not what I've seen. Right. Um, and so the pillars are really about what are the forces that are working together as we move through financial decision making so that we can create wealth. And so one of the things that I kept seeing, yes, clarity is a huge one. And I could go on, we could talk about an hour just about clarity, right, Jackie? Um, but a big one is that people through their marriage, in a lot of cases, lose connection with what is most important to them. There's a lot of compromise that happens during marriage. Your role changes, you know, if you are somebody who has children, you become a mom or a dad, like that role, how you see yourself, how other people see you in the world, that all changes. Right. And a lot of times as we're moving through this process, we go from single to married to family to, you know, all these different things, we lose sight of what really matters to us. And so one of the pillars is values and it's about reconnecting with what's really important to you. And I can't tell you, Jackie, over the years, how many women have said to me, tithing is something that's really important to me. And that's not something we did during the marriage because my partner did not agree that that was something that mattered, right? So that is completely out of alignment in terms of money management with somebody's values. And so getting in tune with what's really important to you, what do you want to prioritize, what's meaningful to you, all of a sudden financial decision making becomes so much easier because we don't have all this external noise of like, I need the bigger house or the fancier car. Most people, when we get really in tune with what we value, most people that's not what we're talking about, right? Most people, when we really get clear about what we value, we're talking about things like, you know, connections with the people we care about, experiences, most people, you know, and that may look very different for different people. Um, but the more that we can get clarity around what matters to us, that's really at the core of the intentional money method. And even through a divorce where it can be really going through and kind of reestablishing your values that maybe you became disconnected from. But suddenly, again, those decisions that you're making through the process become so much easier. A lot of times, what people are up against when they're really kind of stuck and they can't make decisions through the divorce process, a lot of times they're being asked to do something that's out of alignment with their values, right? A lot of times, especially when we're working with families with young children, right? When they're really focused on making sure that their kids are taken care of. Now, it doesn't actually mean that the the um the proposal that's on the table could not be in alignment with the values, but that is like something that we're interpreting, right? And so when we can really get to the core of what matters to us in this situation, what's and that's the power of mediation, right? When you can really dig into these things and talk these things together, then you can get clear on what are we really trying to do for our family here, right? The third one that is really outside of traditional financial services is mindset. But mindset we run up against all the time in divorce cases as well, right? We come in with all these stories of experiences. Maybe you weren't able to talk about money as a kid. Maybe you've never talked about money your whole life. And now you're sitting here in the face of a divorce, and people are telling you to talk about money. You haven't talked about it your entire life. You're going through this process that feels incredibly uncomfortable. And now we're sitting here going, well, let's talk about the topic that's been completely taboo and off the table your entire life. We're just gonna open it up for everybody's scrutiny, right? I mean, that's what it feels like for a lot of people, right? Right. There's all kinds of mindset stuff that comes up. You know, divorce is just one of those experiences that brings up triggers from anything that has happened throughout your life, um, can be triggered through the divorce process, something somebody says, something that you're worried about, you know, it all comes up. It all comes up. And so mindset is really critical in terms of being able to look at the financial picture and feeling confident that, like, I can take care of this, I can do this. This isn't setting me back for the rest of my life. This is setting me up for this next amazing chapter of my life, right? We can look at how we're thinking about these things, especially in terms of financial decision making. Um, and it can be either very disempowering or incredibly empowering, right?

Mindset Traps During Divorce

SPEAKER_03 11:14

So can you give me an example of what that looks like in your practice in practical terms? So someone comes to you and you know that their mindset, uh, or you're not sure maybe what their mindset is, but they say, I have to keep the house, for example. I have to keep it, I have to keep it, I have to keep it. Is there um a way that you can that you have deeper conversations with clients about their values and about mindset that helps you in when you're working with them one-on-one?

SPEAKER_00 11:43

Absolutely. And the house is a good example, right, Jackie, where we're always talking about like, what is it about the house specifically? Like, let's get into the weeds here around why we feel so strongly that we have to keep the house, right? A lot of times it's the district or the neighbors, or it might not have anything to do with the physical building itself. Sometimes it does, um, but a lot of times it doesn't, right? When we can get really clear on why that's so meaningful, then we can start to look at, well, what are other solutions that allow us to resolve this issue without maybe maybe you can keep the house, great, but maybe there are other solutions. I had a wonderful example of a woman, and I share this one often because it was just like it was so powerful. She was adamant, Jackie, that she was gonna stay in the marital home. She had three young children. And there was just to me, like running the numbers, looking at the numbers, I was like, this poor family is just gonna really struggle if they stay in this house. It's just not really financially feasible. And so we looked at other options and we were able to find her a situation from a cash flow perspective where she was gonna rent, she was going to have$1,000 more in cash flow per month, just based on the home maintenance and the mortgage, and take that money from selling the house, the proceeds, and invest it. So not only was she able to save$1,000 a month, but she's also having her other money from the proceeds from the sale of the house working really, really hard from her. How do we get to a place of being able to show you, like, I'm absolutely committed to staying in this house to I can show you to have extra$12,000 plus dollars a year in cash flow for a single mom, that's definitely meaningful, right? Right. And for her, it was actually going through the exercise of seeing that what mattered to her about staying in this home could actually be recreated in other scenarios. But we could also put her in a better financial position in this other option.

SPEAKER_03 13:37

So it comes down to asking the right questions, I'm sure, and and probing and hope maybe getting a resource like your book that would help somebody ask themselves those questions.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

But for me and Jackie, the big thing is there are a million solutions to any problem. And that is the mindset that I enter every case with. And I know that I am not met on the other side with that same mindset. And so that's where when I see somebody really digging in their heels around something, I'm really paying attention to that and saying, are there other solutions that could potentially resolve this, even if that, you know, one isn't gonna work out. So the more that we can get to the core of what we're really solving for, the more solutions that there are that are out there.

SPEAKER_03 14:22

I agree with you. 100%. I think there are so many different options in solving things. And we can be as creative, I guess depending on what type of process of divorce is happening, right? But we can be creative and think outside the box. But I I love that. So okay, so we've got three pillars. What's next after mindset?

SPEAKER_00 14:41

So the last three pillars are a little bit more of what you would think about traditional financial planning. Um, and they are strategy, action, and support. But I think that the first three are really the internal work that we need to do in order to be able to have success in terms of creating a strategy that's gonna work for you and taking the necessary action. For so many people, information, education, it is not an issue. And I talk a lot about that in the book. You can go online and find out the answer to just about any question that you're looking for. It's about taking the action and getting past whatever those hurdles are that are keeping you from taking that action, right? Like I have so many people who come to me and say, you know, I need to rely on this individual for spousal support for the rest of my life because there's no way that I can support myself. Well, if you believe that, that will be true, right? But if we can talk that through and come up with a strategy so you can start taking some action and then support you through the ability to increase your earnings capability, then maybe that's not really the case, right?

Giving Clients Time To Decide

SPEAKER_03 15:46

Maybe it's go back for some more training. Maybe it's do something that you that you've always wanted to do that you just didn't think that you could manage with children. But now that people are entering into a second phase of their life for a lot of clients, it's a great time to stop and think about what else could I do that would bring me happiness. I think it's very difficult to do that in the midst of divorce. It's very difficult to see your way out of it, especially if you are the one that doesn't really want the divorce. Um, you know, there's always in my experience, there's always one person that's way ahead of the other one emotionally. Um, so I think those it it takes a process. And I think also that is why sometimes we might be working with a client for a year because it takes them time to kind of grab onto, okay, what is really important to me? What is the bottom line of what I really want? When you um when you're working with clients and um tell me how how does that relationship work when you have you're working with a client and you're working with the attorney, and the attorney is getting frustrated that, well, this is what they told me they wanted before, and now this is what they're telling me. How do you approach those conversations?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

So I love it. I know it sounds so like crazy, right? But what it tells me is this person is finally taking some time to really think through what matters to them, and that probably the initial was very reactive, right? In general, we find the divorce tends to be a very reactive process, the whole process. And that is why we became intentional divorce solutions, is because we want people to be intentional, to take proactive decisions, to take the time to think about what they want. I share my story all the time. I got divorced after 10 years of marriage. I was already a financial professional and I was completely financially overwhelmed. Like I couldn't even think straight to make a decision. And so I understand where people are coming from. You're going through this huge, huge, huge life change. I get the frustration from the professional standpoint, but I am always encouraging people throughout the entire process to continue to be as mindful and present as possible so that we can look at these decisions and say, are we just doing this by default because we think it's the easiest option? Or are we doing this with intentionality because it's meaningful to me, right? Because it's based on my values, because this is something that's important to my family and important to my future self, right? Um, and so I get, I hear what you're saying, Jackie, because I get it, I hear it all the time. But I do, I really encourage people. And I have a wonderful client that we've been working together for about a year. Now her divorce is just about final. And they have a couple of properties. And initially she was like, I do not want this property, blah, blah, blah, you know, whatever. We talked about it. And then the next time we talked, she kind of said something to me that surprised me. And I was like, so I just want to revisit this conversation and make sure. And now we're a year later and she has negotiated to retain this property, and it's something that she refers to as her happy place. And but there was a lot of emotional processing that went on throughout the last year that got her to this place of wanting to stay in this um property, right?

SPEAKER_03 18:55

Exactly. And I think that you're hitting on a really important point, which is people want to rush through and be done. And that whole idea, I love your the name of your business because that's so important to be intentional about this time of your life. And it's so easy to just say, I want to be done, just get me out of this. This is so uncomfortable. I don't like talking about all these things. I'll just take whatever I, you know, whatever I'm being offered just to get it done. I think that being intentional and thinking it through sometimes takes time. And people aren't always ready the month that they file to make those have those conversations.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

In some cases, we're unwinding relationships that were 40 plus years. I mean, the vast majority of cases we're working on, we're not talking about two, three, four, five-year marriages because generally don't have the financial complexity where we're going to add a tremendous amount of value. So we're talking about relationships that have gone on. You know, they're they're complicated. Relationships are complex and it takes time to unwind these things.

SPEAKER_03 19:59

What do you, and when you're looking at timeframe for each one of these pillars, what do you think takes the most amount of time for what should they, what should a person going through divorce anticipate as the the biggest time frame? Is it gonna, the biggest commitment? Is it gonna be clarity? Is it gonna be taking actionable steps? What is the, where is most of the time spent?

Why Asking For Help Matters

SPEAKER_00 20:21

So for most people, it's it's gonna vary, I should say. It's gonna vary based on your own experience with money, your own experience talking about money, um, but you're also your connection to yourself. You know, so many of us just really do lose ourselves um in our marriages. And so it's it's going to depend, no question about it. The one that we didn't talk a lot about that I want to really highlight though is support. There's this message online right now that we should be able to do everything ourselves, or if we can't do it ourselves, that AI and YouTube are gonna help us figure out how to do it, right? And the reality is that when you're going through one of the most difficult times of your life, for most people, it's gonna be the largest financial transaction of their life. That's right. To ask for some help, it's okay. It's okay. And I feel like people need more permission to say, like, hey, I don't know all the tax laws, you know? And so I'm gonna lean on a CDFA who's gonna help me walk through and understand what are the tax implications of what I'm looking at here, right? That's okay. And even to say, you know what, Leah, I really, really want to stay in my house. That's something that's really, really important to me. And I can't figure out anything else, that's okay too, right? Like everybody's coming to this from a different place. I will say, for some of the clients that I've worked with for years, mindset is a place that it's, you know, we're we're rewiring stories that people have brought from the time they were, you know, babies, essentially. And even, you know, I share sometimes about my own family and my own experience. You know, my grandparents were the depression era. And so, you know, witnessing how They didn't waste nothing anything. And like, um, and and and my grandmother did learn how to do the plumbing and the electric, you know, and and fixing everything around the house himself and and all of those things, um, to my mom, who was an accountant. And so, you know, for somebody of her generation, a woman was incredibly financially savvy, you know? Um those experiences.

SPEAKER_03 22:22

So you combine it genetically.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Those experiences shape your ability to talk about money. If if I had not had the time to think about how those experiences shaped my thoughts, and we're talking about, you know, many decades. I'm not gonna tell you how old I am, many decades at this point, right? Of those stories, of those experiences that are shaping the way we think. And so for some people, especially those who have stayed in a very tight-knit community and basically just heard the same exact messaging over and over and over for decades. It takes, it takes time to kind of really sit with that, take action, build the confidence that you can actually change the way you think about money.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

I think that is the hardest for people. And I don't even think people, it's on their radar that that's something that they should be doing. I mean, I I think I'm very confident as a CDFA that I'm bringing clarity. I'm gonna educate you about all the numbers. We're gonna talk through about your, you know, your budget and what's important to you. But delving into mindset, money mindset, that's a powerful thought to me.

SPEAKER_00 23:27

It really is. And it shows up in so many ways, right? Like I have a client, God bless her, she was a babysitter when she was a teenager. And for about a year, she had worked for a family in her neighborhood. And then she said to her parents, like, you know, I'd like to ask for a raise. I've been doing this for a little while. I'm a little older now. I want to ask for a raise. And her response that she got from her mom was that we don't ask for more. We're grateful for what we're given. Well, you better believe when we were working through her divorce and she's trying to return to the workforce, that the message that's coming into the workforce with her is we don't ask for more. We are grateful for what we get. Well, when we're talking about salary negotiations, the expectation is that you ask for more, or you're not gonna get it, right? And so it plays out in very real dollars, even though it feels like this sort of fluffy thing that we're talking about that we can't really like touch when we talk about mindset, it does play out in very tangible ways.

The Empowered Sisterhood Community

SPEAKER_03 24:22

So, how do you get to the bottom of it with a client?

SPEAKER_00 24:25

It's it's talk, it's asking questions. You know, we have this wonderful program, it's called the Empowered Sisterhood, and we do these community coffee chats. And what I love, Jackie, is they recognize it in each other now, right? So if I identify something that you're saying that's a limiting belief, and I'm calling it out in community in space where you're being supported, right? Um, but we're doing it in a way that it's like absolute love. Well, they love to love on each other. So um, so they start to see it in each other. The more you start to see it in other people, the more you're gonna see it in yourself as well, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:56

That is awesome. So you did that locally. You're in Ohio, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:00

Yeah, we actually do it virtually. We have Oh virtually all over. Yeah, we even have uh one of our members is in Canada. I think a couple of our members are in Canada now that I'm saying that, actually. Yeah. Wow. So tell me more about that. So you do it how often? Uh the weekly coffee chats. Um, so every week are the coffee chats, they get monthly financial coaching sessions. So they can either submit their questions in advance um or just come on live and and talk with me about directly about financial coaching. And then I do a monthly masterclass on, you know, a financial topic.

SPEAKER_03 25:29

Wow. And so how do people find out more information about that?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

Uh so the Empowered Sisterhood is through Watch Her Thrive. Um, so if you follow me on Instagram and watch her thrive on Instagram, you'll see information about the Empowered Sisterhood. Um, we have a new YouTube channel every week on Tuesdays at noon. I go live for intentional money moves. Um, and I talk about the sisterhood there as well.

SPEAKER_03 25:50

Awesome. Okay, and so we're gonna have all this information in the show notes. And we're also going to have information and a link for people to go out and purchase your book, which I'm gonna be right up there at the top of the list getting it. Yeah. It sounds amazing. Um, it sounds amazing to give out to clients. Thank you so much for being with me today on the Divorce Rich Podcast and sharing all of your information and your amazing energy.

SPEAKER_00 26:16

Thank you so much for having me, Jackie. It really is my pleasure and my passion to talk about this work, and so I'm thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_03 26:22

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 26:24

When you're facing divorce, you deserve an advocate who understands what you're going through and who's dedicated to protecting your future. At Dawn, Divorce Attorneys for Women. Our mission is simple: to help women move forward with clarity, confidence, and strong legal guidance. Whether you're just starting the process or feeling overwhelmed by what comes next, our team is here to support you every step of the way. Schedule a free consultation today and learn how we can help you take back control of your life. Visit women's rights.com slash free consultation video to get started.

Mailbag What Is A Pension

Unvested Pension Options In Divorce

Submit Questions And Final Goodbye

SPEAKER_03 27:30

Their contact information will be in the show notes for this episode. Coincidentally, our question for the mailbag today also comes from a listener in Michigan. And it relates to a topic that I run across a lot in my practice. So this question is related to a pension. This listener works for the state of Michigan public school system and is currently accruing a pension with them. So, first of all, what is a pension? A pension is a monthly guaranteed payment by your employer that you're going to receive a certain amount of money when you retire for the rest of your life, no matter how long you live. And that is guaranteed by the employer. That's different than a 401k type plan where you andor your employer may contribute money on a regular basis and it gets deposited into an account that you're in charge of the investments and you can watch that grow over time. Um, in terms of what vesting means, you are always 100% vested in your own contributions to your retirement account. So, for example, any money that I contribute to my 401k as a plan participant, if I left the company, if I quit, if I got laid off, if I get fired, I am always entitled to 100% of everything that I have contributed to the plan on my behalf. Now, when it comes to vesting, if my employer has an employer match on a 401k, it may not be vested in that, meaning that I may not be entitled to take that until I've worked at the company for a certain amount of years. And every company might have a different set of rules on how their vesting works. So for some companies, it may be that you work there for five years and you're 0% vested until you hit the five-year mark in employer contributions. For other companies, you might be vested, let's say 10% the first year you work there, and then 20% the next year, all the way up until 100% vested. So in Michigan, and again, this question was based on how would an unvested pension be treated in the divorce? So in Michigan, any asset that is fully vested, meaning that you can take it with you, you're entitled to 100% of that asset, is marital and marital property subject to division in the marital estate. However, any asset that is unvested may or may not be part of the marital estate. So it's pretty gray. Uh, there are a lot of different case law that have set precedent in Michigan on what could be true when it should be marital and when it should not. I'm not a lawyer. I can't give you legal advice. So I definitely recommend that you talk to a lawyer about this issue. And again, it varies greatly from state to state. So what I'm telling you about information in Michigan would be enough information for you to be dangerous if you live in Minnesota. Um, so as always, you want to check with the lawyer. But in general, anything that is not vested, it's possible that it could be considered part of the marital estate and it's possible that it couldn't. So in this particular case, this listener wrote in that she has been working for the public schools in Michigan for five years. And when she went to get an a pension estimate, they told her that she would they really couldn't give her an estimate because she wasn't fully vested. So if in the state of Michigan, the way that plan works, you have to be employed and earning credits under that pension plan for 10 years to be fully vested. So this listener has only got five years of service in. Now the state of Michigan does require her to make mandatory contributions to her pension benefit in a small dollar amount. So the value of the contributions for her, she contributed to it. So if she were to get laid off, she would take all of those contributions with her along to her next employer. She could roll it over into an IRA if she wanted to, or she could cash that in and pay the taxes on it. Um, however, if she left tomorrow and she got laid off, she wouldn't be entitled to any monthly benefit in the future. So the question comes up how do we treat this in divorce? Well, in my experience, there's a couple different ways. One, we say she's not vested at all. The only value is the contributions that she has made that she would be entitled to take back if she got laid off or she left employment. That's one way to value it. We can't really assign that that love sum to her for to her former spouse because if she cashes in that actual those contributions, the whole plan goes away. So we don't want her to actually cash in the contribution. She would keep that and there would be an offsetting asset awarded to her other spouse. Another way it could be handled is we say, look, it's worth nothing. It's it's zero, you know, zero percent vested because she needs to have the full 10 years in. So at this point, we would say it's worth nothing and we award it to her in the future. Another way that it could be addressed is that there could be a legal document similar to a quadro. In Michigan, they're called EDRO's, Eligible Domestic Relations Order. And they are the same as a quadro, but they apply to public plans through the state of Michigan. Every state is going to have a different name for the order that they allow. Um, in Michigan, it's called an EDRO. We could actually have an EDRO drafted that awards her former spouse a share of the pension if and when it becomes payable to her. So nothing is paid out to them now. If she were to stay for the full 10 years, he would at her earliest retirement date or whenever he's eligible to start taking his share, he could get a percentage of what accrued during the marriage. Um, not obviously the total benefit, but some portion that accrued during the marriage. And that would be another way that it could be handled. So there are all different kinds of ways that it could be addressed. Certainly it could be addressed in terms of other assets within the marital estate. So that is a great question. Any question that you have, please send it to our mailbag at divorcerichpod at gmail.com. We would love to answer your question online. I'm here in Michigan taping this, and it is finally a little bit sunny. So I hope that wherever you are, you're having a good day. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to listen to Divorce Rich Podcast. If you like this podcast, please follow us on Apple or anywhere that you download podcasts and share this link with any friends or family that you think might benefit from this information.