New Jersey couples who enter into the divorce process when they’re over the age of 50 tend to face different difficulties than those in their younger years. Apart from dealing with a lot of emotional guff, you’ll need to consider financial challenges of your divorce as well. It’s a good idea to understand what the most common grey divorce mistakes are so that you can work to avoid them during your divorce proceedings.
Not having an accurate inventory of assets
Traditionally in grey divorces, one spouse takes care of the family finances. This leaves them privy to all of the couple’s assets while the other party may not remember all of them. During the divorce process, it’s necessary for a judge to split up your marital assets. For this reason, it’s highly advisable for both spouses to work together to come up with an assets list. This way, no assets are hidden from the family law court.
Hanging onto the marital home
When people go through a grey divorce, they’ve likely spent a lot of their relationship in one marital home. While one party may want to keep the marital home, this usually isn’t the best idea. Couples who are over the age of 50 are likely going to be entering retirement soon. That typically means that they’ll be living on a smaller income than they are right now. If it took both spouse’s income to pay for the mortgage and related expenses, it’s unlikely that one party will be able to solely handle the expenses after the grey divorce.
Getting divorced, especially when you’re over the age of 50, can be extremely trying. When emotions run high, you make yourself more susceptible to divorce mistakes. By going over the divorce mistakes listed above, you can help to protect yourself from making them in the future.