Conversations About Divorce

Household bills, credit card bills, bank charges, late-payment fees, kid expenses, mortgage refinancing, IRA transfers ... divorce often means having to deal with all of these all at once. It's a deluge that can be overwhelming even if you are used to handling all the finances. If you haven't been handling the finances, then you might feel like you're drowning.

Layer on top of that the emotions and beliefs we all attach to money and it's no wonder people procrastinate and delay dealing with this and end up feeling incompetent and inadequate.

But living on a fixed income, with no one else sharing the financial responsibilities means we do have to deal with it, and the sooner the better. But where do you start, and how do you do it?

Joining Mandy for this Conversation is Shannon McLay, CEO of The Financial Gym. Shannon believes the key to financial success for most people is human contact, not a website or an app and given the right guidance, anyone can be financially fit.

Find out more about working with a financial trainer at the Financial Gym. Membership is usually $85 per month with a money back guarantee and through the Summer you can get up to 30% off the monthly membership for your first year. This is the special offer Shannon talks about during the show.

Remember, you'll find a synopsis of this show at Mandy's blog, Since My Divorce.

As a divorce coach and blogger,  I hear lots of stories about people's marriages - they write and share the awful things that have been going on, often times for years, Then they say they really feel like throwing in the towel and calling it quits but should they?

They feel guitly, scared, embarassed, ashamed, afraid for the kids, can't afford to leave and sometimes even wonder if their reason for wanting out is good enough.

If things are so bad and have been so bad for so long why do they stay? What keeps them from leaving?

Joining me for ths Conversation is Alex Delon, author of Leaving You ... For Me. Alex left her marriage of 47 years, with a medicare card in her pocket and bravely entered singledom. In this frank, honest and vulnerable Conversation Alex shares how she was pressured to accept her marriage for so long, normalized the mistreatment and rationalized staying until the final straw.

You'll find a synopsis of the show at Mandy's blog.

Most people don't make snap decisions to end a marriage and that's as it should be. Getting a legal and financial assessment about the impact of divorce is helpful but how do you assess the emotional relationship? And if it's your spouse who's deciding to end the marriage, how do you know whether to keep fighting for the marriage or to accept their decision?

Joining Mandy for this Conversation are Elaine and Joe Foster, co-authors of I Wish I Knew This Before My Divorce: Ending The Battle Between Holding On And Letting Go. Their book is available on Amazon and features the marital autopsy, developed by Elaine Foster based on the 24 factors that are most often found in divorcing couples.

Have you ever met anyone who said their divorce was easy? The legal process may be easy for some but the emotional process of ending a marriage is challenging for virtually everyone. People often describe it as the hardest life experience they've faced.

Getting divorced has a way of bringing out the worst in the best of us. It shakes your confidence, your self-esteem and fills you with self-doubts and fears of not being enough - not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough, not capable enough ...

These are self-limiting beliefs and they hold us back from rebuilding our lives after divorce and from living life to our potential. The solution starts with self-love and compassion. Attorney turned life-coach Sunny McMillan says that while the mainstream may see this as fluffy and self-indulgent, she believes they are the cornerstone to divorce recovery and coming out on the other side whole.

Listen in to Mandy's and Sunny's Conversation as they chat about why most people struggle with self-love and how you can change that.

Sunny McMillan is the author of Unhitched: Unlock Your Courage And Clarity And Unstick Your Bad Marriage. You can download a copy of Sunny's book for free at Unhitchedbook.com and read more about Sunny at GoldenOverSoul.com.

Find a synopsis of this show about learning to love yourself after divorce and more divorce support at Mandy's blog, SinceMyDivorce.com.

It doesn't matter who it is, best-friend, niece, cousin ... who wants to go to an event celebrating a marriage when your own marriage is falling apart or if you're in the middle of all the legal wrangling or even when you're just starting out on your own again?

Can you say no to wedding invites?

Can you go solo, even before you and your spouse have gone public?

Who else can you take as a plus one?

How do you handle those awkward questions from extended family members?

Joining Mandy for this Conversation is Elise Pettus, founder of Untied.net, an online magazine and real-life community based in New York, for women going through divorce. Pettus says weddings are the perfect opportunity to push yourself out of your comfort zone and to start exploring the next phase of your life and she has plenty of suggestions for keeping them fun.

Check out Mandy's Since My Divorce blog for a synopsis of the show.

Regardless of how civil or amicable you want your divorce to be, disagreements are inevitable. Knowing how to calm anger in divorce could be your key to resolving these disagreements and staying out of the courtroom.

When you're negotiating over the division of assets and how to parent together, and the hurt and pain are fresh and raw, it's hard to approach this simply as a business negotiation. It's easy to let all the past history bubble up into angry outbursts.

Those angry exchanges can continue long after the divorce is final when you're parenting together.

Are there things you can do to calm your SBTX's anger?

If you're uncomfortable around anger, is it possible to stop yourself from walking away, withdrawing?

What if it's you who's angry? Is it healthy to get angry? How can you stop yourself from directing your anger at other people?

Joining Mandy to explore this Conversation is attorney, mediator and peacemaker Douglas Noll. Doug coaches people as diverse as Fortune 500 company executives and inmates in maximum security prisons. He is the author of De-Escalate: How To Calm An Angry Person in 90 Seconds or Less. 

Visit Mandy's Since My Divorce blog for a synopsis of this Conversation.

Many couples don't discuss their child's college expenses at the time of their divorce for two reasons. One, typically, courts have no jurisdiction over this and there is no requirement for parents to pay for their child's college education so many lawyers recommend leaving it out of the divorce agreement. 

Two, when getting everything else resolved has taken so much time and effort, who has the energy to discuss something that isn't required?

That could be a big mistake and at the very least, financial aid expert Paula Bishop says couples need to agree to meet and discuss financial aid before their child starts the application process. Not doing so, could make the cost of attending college significantly more for your child.

Listen in to this Conversation to learn the key points about financial aid including how to determine who is the custodial parent and the difference this makes.

Paula offers some key resources for how to pay for college without going broke at her website.

You'll find a synopsis of the show at Mandy's blog, Since My Divorce.

Nobody likes to think their spouse is lying to them but if you're getting divorced, the chances that they are not being entirely truthful increases and you need to be alert to that possibility. Accepting everything they say as fact could hurt you.

If you've always believed your spouse, how to do start to detect the lies?

On the otherhand, if you're convinced now that everything out of your spouse's mouth is a lie, how do you know what's true?

What are the telltale signs the experts watch for? 

Joining Mandy for this Conversation is body language expert, Traci Brown. Traci is often seen on TV analyzing the likes of Lance Armstrong, Hillary Clinton, Tom Brady and Tonya Harding. She is the author of How To Detect Lies, Fraud and Identity Theft.

You can find a synopsis of this show at Mandy's blog, SinceMyDivorce.com.

Most people don't want a litigated divorce. They want a civil divorce. They hope their spouse will agree that the marriage is over and then they can discuss the parenting and finances as reasonable people who once loved each other. 

No one wants the nastiness and expense of a courtroom battle and no one wants long, drawn out negotiations that keep you locked in a state of limbo for months.

The good news is that you can have a civil divorce and the key to that is being emotionally prepared to choose that path. It's not easy. It requires patience and maturity and a commitment to that path.

Joining Mandy for this Conversation to chat about how you can choose a civil divorce is Sally Boyle, a certified finanical planner and certified divorce financial analyst. Boyle is also the author of Deconstructing Divorce: Taking The Mystery Out Of Divorce And Its Impact On Your Family, Finances, and Future.

You can find a synopsis of the show at Mandy's blog Since My Divorce.

Whether you like the term or not, gray divorce is real and the rate for midlife divorces in the U.S. is increasing. Most of the time, the kids are adults or in college so the absence of parenting issues can make the divorce easier. Conversely, there may be more assets that need to be divided and this makes these divorces more complex. What is clear, is that midlife splits are not easy or straight-forward and men and women experience these divorces very differently.

Listen in to discover what drives these divorces, the social penatly that men often pay and the financial challenges women have to overcome.

Joining Mandy for this episode Jocelyn Elise Crowley, Ph. D, professor of public policy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Crowley's most recent book is, Gray Divorce: What we Lose and Gain From Mid-Life Splits.

You can find a synopsis of the show at Mandy's blog, Since My Divorce