Divorced or Widowed? 4 Steps to Take Command of Your Money

It really came home to roost for me at a personal level because I've been divorced and I found that, even for me, I'm a smart woman, I'm a strong woman, I know about finances, and yet I was in this situation that I'd never envisioned that I would be. And I could only think, I can't believe I'm here, and I wanna get through this as quickly as I possibly can. And I ended up making choices during that process to move it along. That left me in a worse financial situation that I needed to be. And I thought afterward that, you know, if it happens to me, what about all the other women who have no experience in financial services? Welcome to "The Informed Investor," where we break down the latest financial headlines, bringing in research and insights to help you separate the news from the noise. Hey, welcome, everybody, to "The Informed Investor." We appreciate you taking the time out today to watch the show. And it is a show brought to you by Dimensional Fund Advisors who is bringing financial science to investing. Now, today's topic, it may be a bit heavy. Today, we are going to get into the challenges that women face as they transition through a death of a spouse or divorce. But to have that conversation, we are very fortunate to have Evelyn Zohlen with Appella Wealth join us today. So, Evelyn, welcome to the show. Great to have you here. Thanks very much, Mark. I appreciate that. Before we get into that, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, kind of how you started your firm, and we'll go from there. Absolutely. So, in a former life, I actually was an officer in the United States Air Force for nine years straight out of college. And once I left the service, I actually was hired by a large asset management company on the east coast to be on their institutional side as a relationship manager, taking care of big companies with their 401 plans and such. And over the years that I worked in that capacity, I realized that I could make a lot more impact on lives working with individuals as opposed to these large corporations. And so I actually took a really deep breath in 2002 and left this company to start my own financial planning practice. I actually hung out that shingle in early 2003. Early on, really determined that we wanted to become experts and focus on serving a particular niche of individuals that really need a good financial planner at a moment that they're facing in their lives. And that is serving widows and divorcees who often find themselves in a situation that they didn't ever want and didn't expect and are now struggling with both grief and other emotions while also some financial anxiety. So been doing this on 23 years now, and I'm part of a terrific team of planners nationwide with Apella Wealth. These decisions you're talking about, I mean, they're life-changing, to get 'em right. And it's not just that, but it can cascade for generations as well. So it's super important. And maybe that's a good place to dive into then. How did you get into the focus you have around, you know, we're talking about with the widowers or the divorcees on that? Yeah. Well, it actually went back, I'd say, even to when I was working for that asset management firm as a relationship manager for 401 plans and such, because, as that relationship manager, I was responsible not only for interacting with the senior leaders in that company, but also with the participants in these retirement plans. And I would regularly encounter situations that my team wouldn't be able to resolve, that would bubble up to me. And the situations would be things like Mr. Jones had died and he forgot to name his wife on his 401 plan as his beneficiary, and she's anxious about the finances in her life, and she was wondering if there's anything we could do to help accelerate getting those 401 assets distributed to her. And I would look up Mr. Jones's account thinking, "Poor Mrs. Jones, not only is she navigating grief from her husband dying, but she's got a lot of financial fear as well." And I'd pull up his account balance and he'd have $32,000 in his account balance. And I would think, "Wow, is this it, this is the difference between, you know, financial success and Mrs. Jones's future or not?" And clearly that was not going to be the case. And I saw it often enough that I thought that if somebody had just gotten to the Joneses a few years ago, or, better yet, 10 or 15 years ago, she would still be grieving, but at least her financial situation might be on more secure footing. So that was, I'd say, the seed of where that came from. But then it really came home to roost for me at a personal level because I've been divorced. And I found that, even for me, I'm a smart woman, I'm a strong woman, I know about finances, and yet I was in this situation that I'd never envisioned that I would be, and I could only think, I can't believe I'm here and I wanna get through this as quickly as I possibly can. And I ended up making choices during that process to move it along, that left me in a worse financial situation that I needed to be. And I thought afterward that, you know, if it happens to me, what about all the other women who have no experience in financial services or confidence in that? And I really took that home in my work and how I felt personally with, I have a mantra that it shouldn't happen to anyone else, meaning that I wanted to, for both of these women, the Mrs. Joneses and the people like Evelyn, navigating a divorce, that I wanted to be able to step alongside them and be an advocate for them and help them find their voices when perhaps they couldn't find it on their own. Do you have that mantra on a wall in your office? Thank God, that's right here. It's all right here. Shouldn't happen to anyone else. Be a good thing to have on you. It shouldn't happen to anybody else. I love that. And probably keeps you motivated. Absolutely, it does. To do what you do every day. Yeah. When we were talking, I loved how you described sort of the situation a lot of families naturally get into, which is, particularly when you have kids, right? You use the term divide and conquer. Right? Right. This spouse goes and does all this stuff for the family while this spouse does all this stuff for the family. And as we get into, then many times, from a financial perspective, it's the man that's doing a lot of this stuff and the women just aren't up to speed on that. That's a lot of the challenge you face then, when you're dealing with these things, right? Right. Well, and there can be so much judging, external people looking at the wife thinking, "Well, why didn't, you know, why didn't she get more involved with her own finances?" And she can even have some self-recrimination about, "Why didn't I know more about the financial situation?" But as couples, we do divide and conquer. We are so busy, you know? We all only have 27 hours in the day. And so we are all quite busy with our lives. And couples, we as part, we're partners and we say, "Okay, I'll take care of this if you take care of that. I'll make sure the kids get to soccer practice as long as you'll make sure the garbage gets out." And that ripples through every facet, every corner of our lives as couples. And so you're right. I think that as part of that divide and conquer, what often happens is the wife will say, "Okay, if you'll take care of making sure we got some retirement savings going in and getting things invested, I'll take care of everything else in the house." And maybe she even does budgeting. She's taking care of all of the cash flow, of making sure we have groceries, and that the bills are paid or things like that. But in any case, it's very rare for both partners to be fully involved with every facet of their financial lives. And in the instance that she is not involved, well, what can happen is that she just delegates completely and trusts because this is what you do with your partner, trusts that he's taking care of things. And sometimes he's doing a fabulous job and is just not being communicated. Sometimes he's not doing a great job and it's not being communicated. In either case, she's left in the dark, and not from carelessness, but rather place of trust and of assumption that somebody else has taking care of it for her. Well, let's transition then into, it's happened. Right? There's been a death or a divorce. And, you know, most of our conversation, we're gonna look at both of those, and I think there's probably a lot of overlap between the both, but we'll also highlight some areas where things can be a little bit different. And we'll focus mostly on the financial aspects of that. I'd love to get your thoughts and sort of compare and contrast those. Sure, sure. You know, you're right, there are similarities in that you had a partner and that partner is not around. Whether voluntarily or involuntarily, they're not going to be there anymore. And you're having to figure out a financial future on your own. So there are some similarities, but there are clearly profound differences between death of a spouse and a divorce. You know, with the death of a spouse, this is final and it's non-negotiable. You're not going to be able to change or even have a whole lot of influence on the outcome of that. And what I mean by that is, you know, when somebody dies, a lot of decisions have been made at that point. For example, beneficiaries. Whatever the beneficiaries were, that's what it's going to be. The wills, the trusts, that sort of thing, you know, a fair amount of decisions have been made already. And so with the death, it's final. He's gone. And a lot of outcomes are not negotiable at that point. In comparison with a divorce, you've got a lot of uncertainty. There's nothing final. Even after it's final, it doesn't feel like it's final. So there's a lot of uncertainty. There can be conflict associated with it. And actually you can shape the outcome when you are going through a divorce. You do have a fair amount of impact and influence over what the outcome financially is going to be through that, and that brings a different level of control, a different level of maybe empowerment. On the other hand, it also brings additional risk because the decisions are yours to own, you know, one way or the other. And so that can bring additional anxiety and fear and uncertainty along with it. And so while definitely some similarities for a woman who's getting divorced or whose husband has just died and figuring out their financial path, there are some profound differences that impact how they approach their next steps financially. The way you mentioned that about you can shape it and you can control some of the timing on the divorce side, timing meaning you can defer some things and maybe defer some decisions. But, you know, what really struck me on your comment about the death is it's there, the trust, the beneficiaries, whatever's there- It's there. It's there. And you can't make changes. That was a huge takeaway for me on shore-it-up, you know? Again, as a reminder- Make sure. Even for me personally, I'm sitting there going, I wonder- When was the last time you updated your estate documents? Yes, it's critical because there's no going back at that point. You know, once somebody has died, you can't make the changes. And so it's important to make sure that whatever's going to happen is what you and your spouse want to have happen. What do you find some of the biggest challenges that these women are facing? Because obviously emotionally it's devastating already, and then that's compounded financially. If certain things aren't in place, you can't find stuff, like what are some of things that you see that can be, this exacerbates already what they're dealing with? Yeah. I think that, you know, what you've touched on some really common "challenges" or "problems," put in air quotes, that they encounter. You know, one is just of this lack of understanding. I call it the life binder was missing. You know, having an idea of where everything in the life, your financial life was located, what are the accounts? Where are the passwords? How do I get into this? I don't know. Who's doing my taxes? You know, I never really did anything or reviewed them. So not having the big picture or even, you know, snapshots into corners of her financial life is a big challenge. I think also that lack of engagement, it results in not knowing where the information is, but then also a lack of confidence in general. I mean, maybe she did have the binder, but she never cracked it open. So she doesn't have any confidence about navigating the financial decision making that she's going to have to do now. And I guess a more specific challenge that I see quite often, especially with widows, is she thought everything was okay with the estate documents. "Oh, yeah, we have our wills, we have our trust. You know, everything's okay. Our beneficiaries are set up," and come to find out that, in fact, not. "Well, we set it up when the kids were born," or, "We set them up when we got married, and now the kids have all graduated from college and we never updated them." And there can be some really, really unhappy discoveries from estate documents that weren't ever updated. We updated it a couple years ago, two years ago, when our kids were out of the house. Good. We did all that stuff. And that's great. There's a couple beneficiaries I still need to check on. Check your venues. So I gotta do that. Check your venues. Right away. But, you know, one thing I'll mention, we walked out, the attorney, she worked out of her home. And as we're signing all the final updated wills and everything, and, Betsy, my wife, she's like, "So if we die, what happens? What do our kids do? How do they deal with this?" And she goes, "Betsy, they call me. That's all they have to do, and I will take care of everything." And we get in the car and Betsy's going, "I can't tell you how good I feel." And for her, that's all she had to hear, was just call her the kids. Everyone has their, I don't know what you call it, a trigger point or something, you know? Right, right. What is that moment of relief that, I've got it. So I appreciate you sharing that story because that knowing what should happen, who should call, what's gonna happen? We get hit by a pie truck together, what should they do? And so I think that that clarity for you and Betsy is very important. But, you know, who else might wanna know that are your kids. You know, they might wanna know that as well. I'll tell you a funny story. I've been visiting Austin a little bit recently because we're redoing a house here. My folks live in Kerrville. So I go see my parents while I'm in town, 'cause if you're near your mother, you better go see your mother. And because we were in town, she invited my brother and sister to come to town too, because they wanted to take us to have a meeting with their estate attorney and have a conversation about what are the plans. And then we went to their home and we did a walk about the house with a clipboard. and they were asking, "What are these things do you want when we die?" And I thought, "Mom, please, this is terrible." "Don't make me answer that." "Don't make us do this." However, better to do it when everybody's laughing and eye rolling about it than after people have died. And then all of a sudden, you're arguing over great Aunt Susie's teacup collection, you know, or ridiculous things like that. And so I think that, you know, when we think about, "Well, what can I do to prepare maybe to make things easier for if when my spouse dies?" One of the things could be to make sure, obviously, that your estate documents are updated, we've talked about that, but also share the news, share. And that doesn't mean that you have to tell people dollars or things like that. But rather maybe let them know the flow, especially if one of your decisions might be different than what your family expects. I'm the oldest of three kids. And if my parents, and, we're going three ways, you know, when my folks die, it's gonna be divided three ways. But what if my sister was only gonna get 10% and my brother and I were gonna split the other two, the rest of it, the other 90%? You know, maybe my parents had reasons for that. But unless they have a conversation and let people know, that could leave a family emotional mess afterward. And so I think that sharing with your families what the general plans are, and especially if there are any decisions about things not going the way that the family might think, let them know. Or at a minimum, 'cause I know that can be a hard conversation, at a minimum, please write a letter. It can just be attached to your estate documents. But if there is something that is gonna be different for the family than maybe what they're thinking, don't leave them in the dark about why you did that, because these are people who are gonna live a long time after you're gone, we hope. And you want them to have the best relationships possible. And so I think that that's really a gift that you can give to your families, making sure your estate documents are updated. And then don't surprise them. Let everybody know, there's nobody, in my family, there was no surprises that Evelyn was gonna be in charge of the estate. I'll be the executor of the estate as the boss. Bossy, oldest child, it's my destiny. But, you know, do your family a favor and let them know what the plan is so they're not surprised in a moment of intense grief after you've died. Well, it's such an important point to you, 'cause every parent wants their kids to have a tight relationship. Right. Right. And the last thing you want them is feuding over something where there was a lack of clarity or understanding. So that was really powerful. What do you recommend for folks to check on your will, power of attorney, all that kind of stuff? Like every, obviously life events. Right, of course. But even with that, you just check on every five years or three years. Actually, we say three to five years, every three to five years. And we make the joke that we wanna dust them off because we've got this, I've got this visual of a dusty binder up on a shelf and we're gonna talk, and gonna get that. But every three to five years, because even if nothing significant has changed in your life, the laws around you are changing constantly. And we've had some really big tax laws change that have profound impact on states in the last several years. And so every three to five years, at a minimum, even if you think nothing has changed, go check it out. I was, literally just today, this morning before I met with you, checking on beneficiary designations on some IRAs because we have a spouse who is not in good shape. And so we go through and we check these things, and we discovered that a beneficiary was not updated the way that he had wanted it to be updated. And I felt this profound relief that we caught it before somebody died. And so that's what spouses can do for each other, is make sure that we are keeping these things current. And even if it's just check, check, check, all good, it's at least you know, you have that confidence that everything is in the right place. Well, and even the consequences of that, let's say, you know, that that happened, either one, there is no beneficiary, kind of like the Mr. and Mrs. Jones's example you gave earlier. Then it goes to probate. And then it's just slogged in there for however long. And you may need that liquidity. Or perhaps it's thrown to somebody else that was never cleaned up- How about an ex-spouse? An ex-spouse, that probably doesn't go well. Never. Never. And it's things like, well, we've, again, I joke about the ex-spouse, but it's not uncommon, especially sometimes we end up with old 401s, I called them orphaned. "Oh, you know, it's not very much money. It was only $18,000 left at an old employer from decades ago." And it does have the ex-spouse named as the beneficiary on the 401 plan. Well, imagine the current spouse, I mean, even if it's not much money, just the emotional impact of discovering, yes, there was another account out there. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's going to his ex. I mean, that's just bad on so many levels. And so we wanna make sure that those are checked regularly and that they're accurate and correct. What do you find life-insurance-wise? Has that gotten better over the years where people are properly insured for obviously an unexpected death? Yeah, I think that there is much better awareness around the need for it. And I think what happens though is that there's sometimes an underestimating of how much is needed and who needs it. Obviously it's very common to think, "Oh, well, I'll make him the breadwinner. He's the breadwinner. And so we should get a big life insurance policy on him in case he dies young and the kids are young and the wife is still young and we need funds to take care of them." But if she was the primary caregiver and he dies, "Well, she may or may not be able to stay in that role as a primary caregiver." And so I'll remind folks that, yes, you want your breadwinner to have insurance, but you want your caregiver to, you know, insurance on the caregiver as well, because if she is the one who dies, I'm being so morose here, but if she is the one who dies, he's gonna need to replace the work that she has been doing. And that can be very, very expensive. Very costly, yeah. Another one related to that too I've heard about is, let's say you're divorced. Yes. Right? And then you think, "Well, we're divorced. I don't need life insurance on my ex." Well, in fact, you might, if you're getting alimony or child support or something like that, you really need life insurance. Exactly. On that other person who's providing those resources. Absolutely. It can be very appropriate. And that too can feel like, "Wait a minute, that feels a little weird. Does that create unwelcome consequences about having life insurance on your ex-spouse?" But, yes, there, and it's not uncommon to negotiate that as part of a divorce settlement, that there is life insurance on the ex-spouse, at least for the period of time that he or she is responsible for paying child support or alimony. But if we take it even a little bit further, you know, child support, let's say, takes you through age 18 but clearly kids still have expenses past the age of 18 and oftentimes college funding is not part of divorce negotiations. But that doesn't mean that the ex-spouse isn't going to want to still fund college expenses, let's say, or trade school or whatever it might be for their kids. And so it might be appropriate to have an insurance policy that covers the ex-spouse maybe through the kid's mid-50, or, excuse me, mid-20s, so that there's protection to pay for those kid's of education expenses in case dad dies. So, yeah, it really is dependent on each family- Exactly right. Situational for sure. All that stuff. Okay. What are some of the other things as you think through then somebody has to deal with or transition? And this is something that I went through when my dad died I think about three years ago or so, is, you know, you call the credit card company. Right? And they're like, "Oh, hey, thanks for calling." And then instantly card shut down. They shut things down. They shut things down. "Well, what about my mom?" They're like, "Oh, she's gotta apply for a new card." Right. Right, or the bank accounts, you know, all this stuff. So how do you help people think through liquidity needs and prepare for that in advance regardless of death or divorce? Right. Either one. So actually lots to unpack in that, that question there, but I guess I, we always start with, I don't want it to be a formulaic checklist, but it's more about creating stability in her life. And it does start with making sure that we stabilize cash flow, that there is a source of money regardless of what happens. Because you're right, you start notifying banks that somebody has died. And sometimes you don't even get to notify them. Little known fact, that when somebody dies, the funeral home or the mortuary or the crematorium or whoever is taking care of the deceased notifies social security, you know? The survivor is not even the one who notifies social security. They can for sure. But somebody else has already notified social security and social security immediately turns off any social security payments that were coming under the deceased social security number. And you might think, "Well, that's just a social security payment. That's not the end of the world." Well, when a bank sees that social security has turned off a benefit, it's a trigger on them. All of the banks have an internal notification that if a social security benefit is turned off, they query why. And then sometimes the bank finds out from somebody else other than you. And that can create some really, again, unhappy consequences because the bank can freeze accounts as you're suggesting. And so, you know, a step that you can take to make sure that you have stable cash flow regardless of the situation, and this is, death or divorce, is to make sure that you have your own bank account. Make sure that you've got one in your name or if it's going to be a joint account in both your names, make sure your social security is listed first. Because in a lot of accounts, trust accounts, joint accounts, there has to be a name and a social security number listed first. And many, many times, it's the husband's because he has opened the account and as a result when he dies, his name has to come off, his social security number comes off. Well, there is some reshuffling to get her name and her social security up first, if you will, on the list. And so make sure you got some accounts where your name and your social security number are first. Likewise, with credit cards, it's still very interesting to me how many women do not have credit cards in their own name. And so this is critical not only for being able to access credit if your spouse's credit cards are shut down and you are an add-on to those credit cards, but think about establishing your own credit history. It's really been sad and I know frustrating for her to discover that, you know, she was making sure that the credit cards got paid, she was making sure that the mortgages got paid. You know, she's doing the daily cashflow budgeting in the house, and yet because he opened the account or the mortgage was under his name, she doesn't get any of the credit for creating her own credit history. And then he's gone and she goes to open her own credit card or get a mortgage or car loan of her own, and she's denied because she has no credit history. We don't know who you are. Exactly right. Right, yeah. Exactly right. So you get a credit card and do your own social, and bank account, probably your own social, and just have that. Exactly right. Exactly right. Two really, really important things for making sure that you've got financial independence and, you know, I know we'll talk more about, well, what do you do before somebody dies or before you get divorced? Not that any of us plan on getting divorced when we get married, we all think- How do you, well, we're on it. How do you coach that conversation to say, "Hey, honey, just in case, I gotta get my own accounts." "Just in case, this goes sideways and not the way we thought it was going to." Actually, I think that it's about framing the conversation around independence. That, you know, we're coming into our relationship financially independent. And, of course, if you're actually not financially independent, you might need to rework your wording a little bit on this. But about financial independence rather than mistrust, you know, about, you know, "We're both financially independent. I wanna make sure that we remain financially independent. And part of our success in that is making sure that we both have access and visibility into our financial situation." And access and visibility doesn't mean that we all have to be experts. I'm not actually trying to create everybody as financial experts, but access to the information and visibility into it are ways that we can both feel like we have control and confidence over our finances. How do you recommend then a woman get more involved in the financial side of things? Perhaps a couple housing advisor obviously participating in that, but there's probably more to it than just sitting in a meeting. Yeah, actually it starts before you ever get married, because this is a conversation that should be happening. You know, do you wanna live close to your parents? Do you like dogs or cats? And do you wanna have kids? You know, financial conversations are really important as well. And having that conversation early on helps lay a foundation for what it's gonna look like when we are married as a couple later on. And so we start by just having those financially independent stand on our own two feet kinds of conversations. And candidly, just a side note, one thing, have that conversation because if he's got a lot of debt, you wanna know about it. You know, I'm talking to my ladies here. If this guy has a lot of debt, and for all the men listening, same thing. If she's coming into the relationship with a lot of debt or maybe some damaged credit or something's going on, that's not a, "Okay, you're off the island, I'm not interested in you anymore," but this is something you wanna know going into a relationship again about independence, visibility, and confidence in the kind of financial relationship we're gonna have too. So before you ever get married, have those conversations. But then early in the relationship, it is about back to divide and conquer. So how do you wanna handle this? I'll tell you on a personal level, my folks have been married 61 years this year. And so a very, very long relationship. And they have his, hers, and ours bank accounts. And, you know, they're from a generation where that was not common, right? And so a lifetime together has helped them realize that this is how they work best together on a financial level, his, hers and ours. And the nice thing about his, hers, and ours is it does allow folks to feel like they're retaining some financial independence while still being part of a partnership together. All right, let's go into then they're dealing with it. Now they have their investments, let's talk investments for a little bit there. When you think about that, how do you help them? Like you probably come across situations where investments are not in good place, undiversified, whatever the situation is. How do you work with them on that? Do you find that challenging for them to make decisions, to change things? Yeah, it is not uncommon at all for them to be night and day when it comes to their comfort taking risk, their knowledge around investments. And so creating a coherent strategy can be very, very challenging. So we have a lot of conversations first about goals because any investment decision should be based on goals first. And then you build a portfolio based on, what are we trying to accomplish here? And so we start with a conversation. And getting them on the same page with goals is actually really important first step. Because if he's a hot shot, day trader, thinks he's got all the answers, timing the market, so on and so forth. The ego is a, it's a challenge. It's a formidable thing. It's a funny thing too. But it's a formidable thing. And she is much more in the, "Look, I wanna make sure it's gonna be there in the future when we need it, camp." And so we've got a big discrepancy between how we wanna approach this. Well, if we can get alignment on goals and what we're trying to accomplish, well, then we could probably bring them a little bit closer together on what's a good mix of investments for achieving these goals. If the goal is to buy a house in five years, that's a goal that has very clear risk parameters around it. Then it's easy for me to illustrate why we need to not be doing what our formidable ego is doing. And maybe her camp is a little more appropriate, although, you know, a little further out, maybe we have kids going to college in 10 years and then we're retiring in 30 years. Well, different time horizons, different types of goals. I can bring them together and say, "Okay, it's not all or nothing. It's a mix because you have different goals." Through all of that though, it is really important to be sensitive to what I dub the sleep at night factor. This idea of regardless of what the goals are, if you are anxious all the time about investments or risk or market volatility, then we need to come together with a mix of investments that allows you to be comfortable and to sleep at night and feel confident, you're gonna achieve your goals, but it's not gonna all blow up in your face because some people do carry that kind of anxiety as well. And what we do in that situation is we just let them know the impact to achieving goals based on this more modest allocation that we might be considering. Do you find people struggle to make changes, meaning, well, Jones really liked that stock, or that fund is really important to him and they're really not gonna be a good part of a diversified portfolio, but they're like, "Yeah, but he really liked that one and I wanna change." Yeah, it's actually a very real thing, particularly for widows that maybe we weren't working with them because it's very common for widows to change their financial advisors. She often can feel like, "Well, that person, that financial advisor, never paid attention to me anyway. They were just interested in what Jones had to say or what Jones was thinking. And so it's very common for us to be working with a widow who had an advisor but didn't feel like she was being served well. But Jones, the deceased spouse, might have had some favorite stocks or maybe Jones had been managing things all these years and now it's fallen into her lap. And on the one hand, it's hard for her, because, on the one hand, she doesn't wanna take that risk. You know, Jones may have been very comfortable taking a lot of risk, owning a lot of stocks, and she may not be comfortable taking that risk, which would suggest, okay, we need to make some changes and maybe add some bonds to the portfolio to tamp down that risk. On the flip side of that though is all the emotion and the grief and the missing belonging for that spouse that's gone, that you'd been married to for 40 or 50 or 60 years, and Jones did a good job. She doesn't actually know that he did a good job. She just knows that she's got money because of what he did, but maybe Jones had a bunch of individual stocks, you know? "Oh, he always loved McDonald's." I'll share a story. We had clients that, it's been a few years ago now, but their parents worked for Henry Ford. And they as children actually met Henry Ford, met Henry Ford. And so you can imagine the emotional attachment to Ford stock that they had. And they would not let go of that stock in their portfolios, individual stocks. And this is very common for widows as well, that if their spouse had a bunch of individual stocks, for them to say, "You know, I don't really wanna let go off Proctor and Gamble, or GE, or whatever it was, because, you know, Jones bought it and he did a great job." And so what we'll try to do in that situation is we go back to goals. What are we trying to accomplish? What are you comfortable taking as far as risk? And then we'll see if it's okay, if it's comfortable for us to shave down some of that McDonald's or Proctor and Gamble or GE stock. Maybe we can hang onto 100 shares. Maybe we can hang onto $10,000 and see if we can maybe move her closer to a diversified investment mix that's better for her overall goals. I would get help not just for the person, the woman who's divorced now, perhaps, or lost a spouse, but dealing with her family members, right, with the kids or that kind of stuff. Exactly. Be valuable. It's a package deal, right? Well, with both widows and divorcees, it's a package, you get the family too, especially with widows, because it's a vulnerable time for widows, unfortunately, this is when a lot of, I say not joking at all, but the sharks start circling, and so the family can be extremely protective of mom, understandably. And they are dealing with their own grief. And, in some cases, they have their own agendas for what they think should happen now. And so there can be a lot of navigating not only for her and decisions that she has to make, but for her and her kids and what's going on with them, and then certainly, as their financial planner, navigating the different personalities, their different agendas, and how they're dealing with their grief themselves. And you're right that sometimes it's can be, I can't get her to engage, you know, there are things I need her to do that I can't get her to do. She's kind of frozen. And so what I think what we try to do in those situations for her and for the family is to give them permission to not do everything all at once. And I work really hard to let them know that there are some things that we are gonna have to take care of right now. But I promise, my commitment to you is that anything that doesn't have to be handled right now, we won't. We'll set it aside and we'll get to it as we want to or as we need to. I promise you, we'll focus on only those things that we have to do right now and then we'll move at a pace that's comfortable for you and the things that have to happen right now. You know, I'll go back to stabilizing cash flow. I mean it, knowing that you're going to be okay buys so much relief that, "Okay, I can just sit back and relax a little bit and just be in this moment. Even though I don't wanna be here, I can focus on this instead of worrying about, am I gonna be able to pay my bills and can I make my mortgage payment?" So we'll start with just the cash flow, but then we'll put together a timeline of, you know, what are the legal things, what are the financial things, administrative things that has to be done? And then we'll say, "Okay, and build your team. You know, let's get you a counselor or a therapist." And I know Jim or Jones always did your taxes. We're gonna need to get a CPA for you. I'll give you a quick anecdote. I just started working with a widow. It was a very quick death unfortunately. From diagnosis to death of her husband was less than six weeks. And so this was quite a shock to her system. And he did everything on the financial side of things, including the tax return. And so he just died at the end of February this year. And she has some mild cognitive impairment. And so as you might expect, the kids have swooped in to help mom and make sure she's going to be okay. But one of the questions was tax return. "I don't think dad did the 2025 tax return. And do we have to try to get that file by April 15th? And, oh my gosh, what if we do?" And we said, "Not to worry. If we can just get your 2024, we can go ahead and put you on extension. And you'll be just fine." And what a relief. Instantly, just- Yeah, exactly right. Exactly, what a relief to not have to worry that we're gonna have the IRS breathing down our neck as part of this as well. And so prioritizing what has to happen next and creating a timeline and then building out the team as part of this. We took care of getting an extension filed for them, but we said, "We'll help you find a CPA. You don't have to worry about that right now. We'll build out the team as we need to." And then from there we build a plan. But obviously that's an increasing time horizon there. The urgent is making sure that we've got your cash flow set and you're gonna be okay. And then we can start building out the rest of it. And I think that knowing that I don't have to make all these decisions right now, it's just a huge relief and gives her a little bit of space to breathe and the family some space to breathe. And obviously it speaks to professional help, right? Yes. From you and attorney, just how valuable that is. Exactly right. All of that. Let's talk about some things you've seen perhaps when a prospect, somebody comes in and says, "Here's why I am where." I guess I'll use the word mistake. Maybe there's a better way to say it, you know, but let's say a divorce happens. And then do you see some common mistakes where, okay, maybe I'm living beyond my means, like my house, I can't afford my house, but they stay in it. Or something like that to where it is just, it's hard to let go, but you got to make those decisions. Anything you see there that people should be aware of? Sure, sure. You know, a handful of common threads, I'll call them, that I- That's a better way to say it probably than my mistake. Common threat, yeah. They can end up maybe compromising her financial future. How's that? That was very good. I love it. The first is in going through, you know, the divorce proceedings, not being mindful of having liquid cash flow, and that attaches very closely to emotional attachment to maybe a particular marital asset. These go hand in hand. And you touched on it often related to the house that a spouse, a wife in many cases may feel like, "I really want the house, I don't wanna disrupt the kids. They're in schools that they love. And so I wanna keep the house, keep the kids in the schools where they are." It may also be, "If I don't keep this house, I may not be able to ever afford to buy my own house." And so there can be a lot of reasons why she wants to retain the house. The challenge can be that a house can be a very expensive asset. You know, I live in Southern California right now and extremely expensive real estate market. And so it can be a very expensive asset to own and maintain. And if you are, you know, putting a lot of your half of the marital balance sheet, if you will, in the house, well, then that means that you're not going to get other things. That could be money in the bank. That could be money in a trust account or IRAs or 401s. And then that may put you in a position that you don't have assets, cash, liquid readily available to you. And that is a, back to my earlier observation, that stabilizing cash flow and making sure that there's a steady supply of cash to maintain your lifestyle is the bedrock of feeling like you can move forward in your life. Well, if you are sacrificing that liquidity to get a house, it can put you on in a very bad position going forward in your new life, ex-sons, the ex-spouse. And so I see compromising on liquidity, you know, becoming so emotionally attached and anchored to something, like a house, that it ends up taking over the rest of the marital settlement for you. And then I also will see some issues around administrative oversights, making sure accounts are titled correctly, making sure that beneficiaries are updated, things like that. Another thing that I have seen, and this can be very specific to a situation. But I've run into it a couple of times the last few months. And that is that, again, back to when we're married, we have a partnership, we're working toward our life together, and oftentimes there'll be a family decision for the wife to stay home to raise the kids. And in some cases, the lifestyle that they're maintaining is not one that they're able to do just off of his salary, but in fact maybe his family has resources. Oh, interesting. Yeah. And the family is then adding to, you know, their son and then the family's coffers, if you will, to maintain that lifestyle. And I had a situation that, specifically she was working, they were both working, she stopped working to raise the kids, she raised concerns about maintaining lifestyle, and he basically said, "Don't worry about it, babe. I've got it. My family will help us with this." And for literally 15, 20 years, the family did. And so they have a lifestyle that is well beyond what they are earning. And so now they're in the process of getting divorced. And she's saying, "Well, how do I maintain my lifestyle? Because that's not my family money, that's his family money." And she's in a really hard situation. I suspect legally that's the case, right? It is probably on his side of- Exactly right. And so, you know, there are some angles that we're gonna be able to take with this, but it was a cold, dark moment when she realized that, "There is no way I can maintain my lifestyle based on the marital assets that we have and because the lifestyle we have had has been built on his family's money. What do I do about that now?" She didn't have the transparency into probably that aspect of perhaps- Well, she knew that it was coming from the family, but it never crossed her mind that she would ever have to replace it on her own. Again, the husband is saying, "Don't worry about it, I got it. You know, my family's gonna take care of this." And so back to what we were commenting about earlier and saying that you don't have to be financial experts and you don't have to be, you know, fully equal and involved in everything in the financial life together, but check on your own financial independence. You know, I know we've got this as a team, if anything changed with the team, could I be financially independent? And if the answer to that is I'm not sure, or if it's no, then it's worth a pause to think about, well, why not? And is there something I can do to increase visibility or access so that I am feeling more comfortable about my own financial independence? Great. You know, one thing that was coming to my mind too, when, again, my dad died, and you mentioned that social security obviously. Lost his. But then also your tax rate goes up quite a bit, right? You're going from a joint return tax rate to individual taxpayer. That's a pretty hefty increase in taxes too. It is. And it feels like such a cruel extra poke after the death of a spouse, is to discover that you are catapulted into a higher tax bracket. And I think that it's a surprise not only because folks don't think about that, "Oh, I was married filing joint and now I'm gonna be single filer or maybe a head of household filer." But they also think, "Well, yeah, but I'm not gonna be getting Jones's social security anymore." And so that's gonna be different. Or maybe there was a pension and that's going to be different, perhaps. But if there was a 401 or an IRA, that's still going to be yours. And now any distributions are gonna be taxed at whatever your new single filer rate is. And so we'll do a couple of things to try to help with that. One is that, in the year that Jones died, you're still filing married filing joint in that one final year. And so we'll do a lot of tax planning in that year to see if we can help with that and how can we better position you going forward. It's one thing. And then the other is it doesn't take away the pain of paying extra taxes, but setting expectations. We'll actually prepare a tax projection for what it's going to look like when you are filing single so that she knows. So it's not a blindsided because nobody likes tax surprises. I mean we don't like paying taxes, but we don't like tax surprises even more. On top of- Exactly right. And so we'll actually prepare a tax projection to try to help her out with that. Going back to this idea of women may not know the accounts, what exists, stuff like that, advice on that. So, for example, there's some different, I use one password, right, for example, right, where you can store all that stuff and passwords and access and everything. So that's important. But then how do you protect that? Meaning going back to, okay, the kids, they get the password to all of that, so then they can see it all, but who keeps the password, right? The master password, you know what I mean? That's great. And what an improvement, a password keeper, like, you know, 1 Password, LastPass, whatever it is, what an improvement that is because it used to be there would be a printout of a spreadsheet tucked into a folder in a file cabinet that hadn't been updated in three years and it was just a mess trying to figure out how to crack into and find out what are all the resources, the assets that are available. And so what we have coached our clients to do in that situation is definitely use a password keeper. The spouses definitely should know what is the master password on the password keeper. And then back to building your team, well, maybe your financial planner should have it. We have the master password for many of our clients' password keepers. Now, for security, I don't actually know which password keeper it is. I just know that this is the password. And so if something happens to Jones and Mary calls and says, "I don't know the password for the password keeper, do you have it?" I could say, "Yes, I do. Do you know which password keeper it is so that she can get into that?" But whether it's your financial planner, maybe it's your estate attorney, maybe it's your CPA, but one of your trusted team members that's maybe not a family member because the family may or may not remember in a moment of intense grief and shock. And so having it with one of your team, your professional team, I think is a great plan B, having a backup there. Yeah. Yeah. You know, speaking of plan B, I've got another one for you really quick, is that back to share with the family what the plans are with your estate documents and such, and then make sure that those documents are someplace accessible. So a lot of times, "Oh, yeah, I've got them in the safe deposit box." Well, the problem with having them in the safe deposit box is nobody else can get to them in the safe deposit box. And so, you know, maybe have them at home someplace. And then again, you know, like with you and Betsy, make sure the kids know that the attorney has the estate documents. Maybe you're a financial planner. We have copies of all of our client's estate documents. And this is important not only in the instance of somebody dying, but nobody ever has a serious medical emergency at a convenient time. You know, it's never Tuesday at 3:30 in the afternoon where you can have your medical directive right here in hand. It's always terrible and at odd hours. And so I have been called on a few occasions by somebody saying, "There's been a car accident. I need to get a copy of a medical directive for my daughter. Can you get me my daughter's medical directive?" And, "Yes, I can, where, where can I send this? Which hospital should I send this to?" And so making sure that somebody, you know, your documents are accessible, and then maybe a trusted third party has copies of your medical or your estate documents, medical directives, things like that, so that they can get them to you if you ever need them in an emergency. All right. You know, we've touched on a lot of things here and I guess a couple things that have been jumping out to me as we go through this. Cash is king. Yes. It's a common line, but it really- That's true. Is key. Right? And it's incredibly important to have the cash, the liquidity. It's incredibly important to have just all the, what is it, the i's dotted, t's crossed in terms of the beneficiaries, updated documents, all those kind of things. And one other thing I want you to touch on, 'cause you made this comment when we we're talking, and people absolutely need to hear this, because I was coming from the aspect of, "Hey, this can be a pretty heavy conversation." And you said, "Yeah, but it can be an incredibly empowering conversation too." So I'd love to just get your thoughts here on that as we wrap this up. Yeah, I do think it can be empowering because, the reason that it's so hard is that obviously either somebody you loved has died or somebody you loved is not somebody you love anymore and they're gonna be gone. And so there's a lot of grief and maybe anger, frustration, a lot of emotion that comes along with that. You're being forced to be in charge of your own financial destiny when you had a partner that was with you forging that financial path together. And so the empowerment part comes from the fact that you are going to be invited, allowed, encouraged, required to be in charge of your own financial destiny. And this is an opportunity for you to really embrace that. And, again, back to building your team, to have a team that surrounds you, wraps their arms around you, figuratively speaking, maybe literally, but helps you get very comfortable and confident and feel like, "I can make great financial decisions on my own." And while the path that I'm on now looking to my future isn't the one I thought I was going to be on, it can still be a good path. And I can feel really confident about my financial future as I'm forging, you know, the road ahead in every other facet of my life. And I'll tie that back to, you know, well, what do you do before it all happens? And it goes back to independence. You know, feeling like both partners feel comfortable in their independence and have access and visibility into information so that if you do end up, when you end up, because if you're married to somebody long enough, it could happen, especially if you're the woman, we tend to outlive them. And so that independence, access, and visibility can then bring you to this moment of empowerment and confidence and maybe a little bit of hope, a future that's better than maybe you thought it could be. Evelyn, this has been outstanding. Thank you for coming in here today. I can see why you had so much success. Oh, thank you. In your firm over the years and I've been very blessed to work with you for all those years too and see the care and dedication in the way you serve the families you serve there. So they're in awesome hands. And so congratulations on all of that. Thanks, Mark. And thanks for your time today. It's been a lot of fun. I appreciate it. All right. And thanks to all of you. Thank you for joining "The Informed Investor." Hopefully that gave you some wonderful insights to think about things into your future there and the independence that Evelyn talked about in the empowerment. Have a fantastic rest of the day, everybody.