Journey Beyond Divorce Podcast

Is your spouse hiding money during divorce? Maybe the spending doesn't match what you're being told, bank statements go missing, or simple questions about money get brushed aside. In this episode, Karen McMahon talks with Krista Shelton, a former IRS Special Agent with more than 20 years of experience and the founder of Focused Forensic Solutions. Krista walks through the five red flags forensic accountants look for when a spouse is hiding money or assets in a divorce.

Krista explains why owning a small business gives a spouse room to underreport income and run personal expenses through the company. Missing financial documents deserve a closer look too, especially when a month or two disappears from the middle of a stack of bank statements. She describes how income controlled by a parent or sibling can suddenly drop once divorce is filed, and how "nominees" are used to move a business into a relative's name while the original owner keeps control. She also explains why one spouse holding full financial control leaves the other exposed. Along the way she offers a reassuring point: every transaction today leaves a third-party record, which makes hidden assets in divorce far easier to uncover than most people fear.

Krista shares the story of Kate, a stay-at-home mom married 36 years, whose gut told her something was wrong. The evidence Krista's team found led to an additional $250,000 in the settlement and a significant increase in the income used for child support, without anyone taking the stand at trial. Karen and Krista also talk about when to use subpoenas to get bank records. They cover how a business valuator differs from a forensic accountant, and how to vet a forensic expert by reviewing their CV and speaking with former clients. Krista explains why bank statements are the single most important document when you suspect hidden money in divorce.

Cost keeps many people from getting help. Krista's firm works on flat fees based on the volume of documents, with most cases around $5,000 and a range of $2,500 to $10,000. That way you know the cost of a forensic accountant before the work begins.

If your gut is telling you your spouse is hiding money during divorce, this conversation will help you understand what to look for and what to do next.

Connect with Krista:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/krista-shelton-cfe-ea/
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/krista.shelton.cfe/
• Website - www.focusedforensic.com

Connect with Karen:

Book a FREE Coaching Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call Join Divorce Support Network: https://bit.ly/jbdpod

The marital home is usually the biggest asset in a divorce, and it can also be the biggest blind spot. In this episode, Karen McMahon sits down with divorce mortgage specialist Tami Wollensak, who brings 30 years in lending and has helped more than 1,000 divorcing homeowners answer one pressing question: can I afford to keep the house after divorce?

Together they explore how to close the gap between wanting to keep the marital home and being able to afford it. Tami explains why agreeing on how to value the home matters more than agreeing on a number, why an appraisal gives you neutral data that a realtor's market analysis or Zillow can't, and how home equity becomes part of the marital balance sheet when one spouse buys out the other. She walks through the ways a buyout can be funded, from a refinance to family help to trading other marital assets like retirement accounts, and why the decision rarely has to be all or nothing.

Karen and Tami also dig into the costs many divorcing homeowners overlook, including property taxes, homeowner's insurance, association dues, utilities, and the 2 to 3 percent of the home's value you should budget each year for maintenance. Tami breaks down how lenders treat alimony and child support as qualifying income for a mortgage, including the six months of court-ordered payments and 36-month continuance underwriters look for, why voluntary payments into a joint account won't count, and how vague settlement language can cut your qualifying income in half. She also shares the housing budget ratios that keep you from ending up house rich and cash poor.

Both Karen and Tami open up about their own decisions around the marital home, and why renting after divorce turned out to be one of the best choices either of them made.

Tami closes with three steps to take before you sign a divorce settlement involving the house: agree on how the home will be valued, gather your mortgage statement so you know exactly what you owe, and track the monthly costs of running your household so you can build a post-divorce budget that holds.

Connect with Tami:

Take the Free Quiz: The Divorce Housing Clarity Quiz - https://empowereduncoupling.com/assessment/

Website: https://www.empowereduncoupling.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tami_wollensak

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamiwollensak

Substack: https://tamiwollensak.substack.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@empowereduncoupling

Connect with Karen:

Book a FREE Coaching Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call Join Divorce Support Network: https://bit.ly/jbdpod

To celebrate a decade of Journey Beyond Divorce, we're sharing a special collection of episodes featuring Karen McMahon as a guest on some of her favorite podcasts. Over the years, Karen has joined incredible hosts across the divorce, coaching, and personal growth space to share her story and her expertise. This collection brings those conversations together in one place, offering a look at Karen's voice and message from a different angle, through the eyes of the hosts who welcomed her. Thank you for being part of this journey, and for helping Journey Beyond Divorce grow into what it is today.

Karen McMahon on Last First Date Radio with Sandy Weiner

In this episode, originally recorded for the Last First Date Radio podcast, host Sandy Weiner sits down with Karen McMahon, High Conflict Divorce Coach and Strategist with Journey Beyond Divorce, for a candid conversation on surviving a high-conflict divorce without losing your sanity. Karen shares why powerlessness shows up so often during divorce, and why shifting the focus back onto yourself, rather than what your ex is doing, is the fastest path back to feeling empowered. She walks through the internal and external boundaries that got her through her own high-conflict divorce and co-parenting relationship, why trying to change your ex almost never works, and how men and women often face very different challenges in a high-conflict split. Karen and Sandy close with a conversation on rewriting the stories we tell ourselves about our divorce, and what it really takes to have your "last first date" and build something healthy the second time around.

Sandy is a certified life and relationship coach who helps midlife women heal from heartbreak and find lasting love. She is the host of Last First Date Radio and founder of Last First Date, a coaching practice and community for women navigating dating and relationships after divorce or a painful breakup.

Learn more about Sandy Weiner and her work at https://lastfirstdate.com, and listen to Last First Date Radio: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/last-first-date-radio/id586220219

Connect with Karen:

Book a FREE Coaching Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call Join Divorce Support Network: https://bit.ly/jbdpod

You spend months, sometimes years, negotiating child support and alimony. Then a layoff, a disability, a business bankruptcy, or a death can stop those payments overnight, and most people have no idea there's a way to protect that income.

In this episode, Karen McMahon sits down with Ron Platt, founder of the National Association of Single and Divorced Families (NASDF) and creator of Support Insured, the only policy on the market that covers child support and alimony together. Ron shares how an idea he and his father developed 30 years ago was turned down by carrier after carrier because of the word "divorce," and how it finally found an underwriter willing to take the risk.

Karen and Ron walk through how the coverage works when the paying spouse loses a job, becomes disabled, files for business bankruptcy, or passes away, with payments continuing for up to a year so the receiving parent isn't left scrambling or paying an attorney to go back to court. They cover how premiums are calculated by age and support amount, why the receiving spouse can purchase the policy on behalf of the paying spouse, what happens with renewals and repeat claims, and why it's never too late to apply as long as a settlement is in place.

Ron also explains why the policy is offered through NASDF membership and what members can access for $19 a month, including mental health sessions, childcare enrollment discounts, realtor referral rebates that can reduce closing costs, career services for parents returning to work after time at home, and a concierge service to help match members with attorneys, mediators, and coaches. He closes with the deeply personal reason he built the association, rooted in his experience as a foster parent and his goal of advocating for children caught in the family court and foster care systems.

If you've ever lain awake wondering what happens if the support stops, this conversation offers a practical next step to protect what you fought so hard to secure.

Connect with Ronald:

• JBD Gift: 10 free memberships to NASDF for one year!! Email: [email protected] and tell them Karen McMahon sent you!
• Learn more about Support Insured and NASDF membership at https://www.nasdf.org
• Follow NASDF on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nasdforg/
• Follow NASDF on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NASDF.org

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Join Divorce Support Network: Back to school offer, 80% off a full year for $99, plus two strategic calls at no cost, one with a coach and one with a financial specialist: https://community.divorcesupportnetwork.com/back-to-school/?utm_source=JBDPodcast&utm_medium=RonaldPlatt&utm_campaign=BTS
• Free Rapid Relief Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call
• Join The Steady Circle: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/hcdsg The Steady Circle is a 12-week group coaching program for women navigating high-conflict divorce. Divorce coach Karen McMahon leads six live, bi-weekly Zoom sessions, where women learn to calm emotional triggers, set boundaries that hold, and respond to a difficult ex with strategy. Each member begins with a Personalized Support Blueprint. She stays connected between sessions through a private peer community, and she gets session recordings, a resource library, and two skills courses: Reclaim Your Mind and Boundary Bootcamp. Members leave steadier, clearer and more confident, with a circle of women who understand exactly what they're facing.

Should you stay for the kids?

Karen McMahon opens this solo episode with a composite scene drawn from moments she has seen over and over in her work: a dinner table, a parent's jaw tightening, and a silence that lasts a beat too long.

Two children respond in two different ways. Nine-year-old Emily fills the quiet with bright chatter, and five-year-old Jake gets smaller, hoping to take up less space. Their parent watches it happen across the table and recognizes the same fear in both of them.

From there, Karen explains what those moments teach. Children who grow up around tension build coping strategies like people pleasing, hypervigilance, and codependence, and they carry those patterns into their own relationships. The research Karen draws on points to ongoing conflict as the source of harm to children, and staying in the house does not shield them from what the marriage looks like.

She leaves you with a question many parents never ask themselves: if I stay, and this is my children's picture of intimate relationship, is that what I want to create in them? Leaving an unhealthy, high-conflict marriage can begin to break generational chains, because you show your children what healthy love can look like.

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Join Divorce Support Network: Back to school offer, 80% off a full year for $99, plus two strategic calls at no cost, one with a coach and one with a financial specialist: https://community.divorcesupportnetwork.com/back-to-school/?utm_source=JBDPodcast&utm_medium=Podcast&utm_content=Stayforthekids
• Mend or End Playlist: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/mend-or-end-your-divorce-free-gift?utm_source=Libsyn&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=Stayforthekids
• Book a Free Rapid Relief Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call

Everyone is turning to AI to get organized, prepare for attorney meetings, and make sense of divorce. Seattle family law attorney Amanda DuBois, founder of DuBois Law Group and 30 years into practicing, explains why that instinct can backfire.

Amanda walks through why conversations with a chatbot have no attorney-client privilege, which means your prompts and the AI's answers can be requested in discovery or subpoenaed. She connects it to something she has seen for decades: journals and diaries are discoverable too, unless you are keeping them at your lawyer's direction for the case.

Amanda shares examples that show how a casual comment to a chatbot can carry major legal weight, including how a remark about when your marriage ended could affect a date-of-separation argument worth a million dollars in stock.

You'll also hear where AI genuinely helps, like sorting credit card statements or calendars, and why it is usually better to hand that work to your attorney, where it stays privileged.

Karen and Amanda talk about the hidden cost of AI-generated questions and AI-edited legal briefs, including hallucinated case citations that your attorney's team then has to untangle at your expense.

The episode closes with practical steps: ask your attorney what they are comfortable with you using AI for, and ask any attorney you are considering how they use AI in their own practice. Amanda also shares more about her firm's Seattle, Edmonds, and Port Townsend offices.

Karen will revisit this topic every few months as the rules evolve. This conversation was recorded in July 2026.

Connect with Amanda:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AmandaDuBois206
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@amandaduboisauthor
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/amanda.dubois.author,
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-dubois-2b46071/
• Websites: www.duboislaw.net, www.amandadubois.com

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Join Divorce Support Network: Back to school offer, 80% off a full year for $99, plus two strategic calls at no cost, one with a coach and one with a financial specialist: https://community.divorcesupportnetwork.com/back-to-school/?utm_source=JBDPodcast&utm_medium=highearningwomen&utm_campaign=back-to-school-2026
• Book a Free Rapid Relief Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call

This episode is for education only and is not legal advice. Consult an attorney in your state.

High-achieving women often carry the whole household on their shoulders. They build the career, bring home the bigger paycheck, and still come home to the kids, the laundry, and a spouse who assumes they can handle it all. When divorce enters the picture, and especially a high-conflict divorce, that weight doubles overnight. In this episode, Karen McMahon sits down with fellow high-conflict divorce strategist Ksenia Muench, founder of Thrive Again Divorce Coaching and creator of the High Conflict Playbook, who lived her own high-conflict divorce as the higher-earning spouse.

Karen and Ksenia start by drawing an important distinction between couples who intentionally chose a stay-at-home dad arrangement and marriages where one partner simply stopped showing up, leaving her to fill every gap. From there, they unpack what makes a divorce truly high conflict: the endless stalling, withheld financial disclosures, petty battles over a single picture on the wall, and a court system that too often looks at two exhausted people and calls them both difficult. They also talk honestly about how the high-conflict spouse knows exactly which buttons to push, why the kids become the bait, and how even the most composed professional woman can get pulled back into the chaos.

The conversation then turns to money. Paying alimony as a woman can feel like a deep injustice, especially after years of carrying the load, yet a judge's job is to look at the present numbers and leave the past alone. Karen and Ksenia share how radical acceptance, the choice between a lump sum and monthly payments, and reframing support as the cost of freedom can help women release the bitterness and reclaim their energy.

They close with what comes next: dating after divorce. Ksenia explains why high-achieving women often lead with masculine energy, why learning what safety feels like in your own body is the first sign you're ready, and Karen shares a powerful client story about how two very different husbands created the same experience of emotional abandonment. When you do the inner work, you stop attracting the same person in a different face.

Connect with Ksenia:

• Free Guide - Seven Myths of High-Conflict Divorce: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NHnFRsAtF-L5rHdq13ZaQZpdKuwoX4zy/view?usp=share_link
• Podcast - Uncoupling Unfiltered: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/uncoupled-unfiltered/id1820205268
• Website: https://www.thriveagaindivorcecoaching.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thriveagaindivorcecoaching/

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Join Divorce Support Network: Back to school offer, 80% off a full year for $99, plus two strategic calls at no cost, one with a coach and one with a financial specialist: https://community.divorcesupportnetwork.com/back-to-school/?utm_source=JBDPodcast&utm_medium=highearningwomen&utm_campaign=back-to-school-2026
• Book a Free Rapid Relief Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call

Whether you've decided to divorce and haven't told your spouse yet, or the decision has been made for you, the first weeks can bring a wave of fear, guilt, overwhelm and uncertainty. In this solo episode, Karen McMahon, high-conflict divorce coach and founder of Journey Beyond Divorce, explains how to prepare for divorce in a way that protects your emotional health, your finances and your children. After 16 years of coaching, Karen has seen that how you handle the emotional side of divorce shapes how well you handle the legal, financial and co-parenting decisions that follow. She explains why staying present, focusing on what you can control and taking one baby step at a time will serve you better than trying to solve the whole divorce in a single day.

Karen then walks through five steps from her free Smart Start Pre-Divorce Checklist. First, she explains why a one-time consultation with a family law attorney matters, even in a high-conflict marriage where your spouse threatens to go scorched earth. She also covers the differences between a litigator, a collaborative attorney, a mediator and an advising attorney. Next she covers how to plan telling your spouse you want a divorce and how to reset your home environment, from separate sleeping arrangements to shared spaces and household tasks. She explains how setting boundaries while you still live together shows you how your spouse is likely to negotiate. She shares guidance on how to tell your kids about the divorce, including when telling them together may not be best. She closes with how a temporary parenting schedule before separation can show you how shared custody might work.

Download the free Smart Start Pre-Divorce Checklist here: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/pre-divorce-checklist

Feeling overwhelmed and ready for support? Book your free one-hour Rapid Relief Call at https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call to get a new perspective and a clear action step from a Journey Beyond Divorce coach.

Join Divorce Support Network with our back-to-school offer: 80% off, a full year for $99, plus two strategic calls at no cost, one with a coach and one with a financial specialist: https://community.divorcesupportnetwork.com/back-to-school/

To celebrate a decade of Journey Beyond Divorce, we're sharing a special collection of episodes featuring Karen McMahon as a guest on some of her favorite podcasts. Over the years, Karen has joined incredible hosts across the divorce, coaching, and personal growth space to share her story and her expertise. This collection brings those conversations together in one place, offering a look at Karen's voice and message from a different angle, through the eyes of the hosts who welcomed her. Thank you for being part of this journey, and for helping Journey Beyond Divorce grow into what it is today.

Karen McMahon on Confessions of a Freebird with Laurie James

In this episode, originally recorded for the Confessions of a Freebird podcast, host Laurie James sits down with Karen McMahon, High Conflict Divorce Coach and Strategist with Journey Beyond Divorce, for a candid conversation about thriving after a midlife divorce. Karen shares her own raw divorce story and the mindset shifts she has gained over 15 years, from moving through the emotional rollercoaster and practicing self-compassion to setting boundaries that actually hold. She offers three neutral statements for communicating with a difficult ex without giving in, strategies for co-parenting without becoming emotionally drained, and ways to heal your triggers so toxic patterns don't follow you into future relationships. She also walks through her 3 A's as a path to building a life that aligns with who you truly are. Laurie is a mother, divorcée, recovering caregiver turned author, certified somatic practitioner, and coach who helps people divorce, heal, and date differently in midlife. She is the author of Sandwiched: A Memoir of Holding On and Letting Go, and her podcast is its sequel, a space for women navigating divorce, empty nesting, loss, and reinvention.

Learn more about Laurie James and her work at https://www.laurieejames.com/, and listen to Confessions of a Freebird: https://www.laurieejames.com/podcast2

Connect with Karen:

• Book a FREE Coaching Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call
• Join Divorce Support Network: Back to school offer, 80% off a full year for $99, plus two strategic calls at no cost, one with a coach and one with a financial specialist: https://bit.ly/jbdpod

Changing the locks is no longer the same thing as changing the access.

In this episode, Karen McMahon sits down with Jonathan Steele, a Chicago based family law attorney and certified cybersecurity professional, for a conversation Journey Beyond Divorce has never had in over 425 episodes. Jonathan has spent more than a decade litigating high conflict, high net worth cases, and he brings a layer of technical expertise that most family lawyers simply do not have.

Karen opens with the uncomfortable truth that almost nobody going through divorce thinks of themselves as a cybersecurity target. Jonathan walks listeners through what a spouse may still be able to see long after someone has moved out: the Ring camera, the Nest footage, the Gmail account still signed in on an old iPad, the shared iCloud photo album, the luxury car app that logs where the car has been and how fast it was going, the location sharing nobody remembers turning on. He explains why the smart devices that were supposed to make life easier, the robot vacuum, the smart refrigerator, the video doorbell, are often running years old software while sitting on the same Wi-Fi network as every device that holds something sensitive. The front door may have an excellent lock on it. The window screen is full of holes.

When Karen asks when in the process people should start addressing this, his answer is immediate. Before you file. Before discovery. Before trial. As soon as you possibly can.

Then the conversation gets closer to home. Jonathan describes how children become tracker beacons without anyone intending it, how a single mutual friend inside a list of eight hundred followers can hand a spouse the photograph that ends spousal support, and how one of his own cases terminated a maintenance obligation of more than a million dollars a year because a woman's adult children were quietly feeding her social media posts to their father. She was simply living her life and posting about it, the way everyone does.

He also answers a question a growing number of listeners are asking. Conversations with AI about a divorce are discoverable, and lawyers have already started requesting the logs.

Karen asks him to triage the overwhelm into a short list, and he does. Move sensitive communication to a more secure messenger. Open a brand new email address. Run the Safety Check tool already built into the iPhone, which was designed for exactly this situation and walks you through revoking access in plain language. Prune the follower lists, including the connections that feel harmless. Cut off camera and car app access. Pause the next time an app requests a permission it has no legitimate reason to want.

And for every listener who has been told by friends that she is paranoid and ridiculous, Jonathan offers the line worth the entire episode. It is only paranoia if you are not right about it.

One small step a day still counts. This is a marathon, and every setting you turn off is protection you did not have yesterday.

Connect with Jonathan Steele:

• Website: https://steelefamlaw.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steelefamlaw/

Resources Mentioned in this Episode:

• Join Divorce Support Network: Back to school offer, 80% off a full year for $99, plus two strategic calls at no cost, one with a coach and one with a financial specialist: https://bit.ly/jbdpod
• Free Rapid Relief Call: https://www.jbddivorcesupport.com/rapid-relief-call