If you are over the age of 50 and are considering a split, then you may need to consider some important repercussions of your divorce. Chances are that if you are over the age of 50, then you and your husband probably have a significant amount of assets that are already collected. This means that you will want to carefully think through the asset division that will occur if you split with your spouse. Usually, your assets will be susceptible to equitable distribution.
Equitable distribution is not the same as equal distribution, and one spouse may end up with more of the estate than the other depending on who brought what into marriage and which would was the breadwinner. Also, one spouse may get more of the tangible assets like furniture and property while another may end up with more liquid assets. You will want to work through the property distribution with an accomplished San Fernando divorce lawyer at Cutter & Lax.
As well, as an elderly couple in the process of divorce, you will want to change beneficiary designations. If you are no longer married to your spouse then you do not need to include him or her on any financial powers of attorney, Living Wills, or healthcare proxies. You may need to re-do many of your estate planning documents in order to remove your ex-spouse’s name from the list of heirs. If you fail to do this, then at the end of your life you may discover that your spouse was never removed from the documents and he or she will inherit all of your finances.
You will also want an attorney to help you as you work through handling finances. If you were not the spouse that handled the finances within the home, then you may be intimidated by this task. If you want more information about how to deal with financial planning at a later age, or if you want to learn how to budget, balance a check book, or pay bills, you can hire a financial professional to assist you.
