What is a CDFA® a CDFA® is a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst®, they are a professional that helps parties of a divorce understand and educate them about the various options they have in negotiating their property division. As a CDFA® they can help each party either individually or as a neutral, working with both parties, to understand what post-divorce will look like from a property and income and cash flow situation. In another video we’ll actually talk about who would be appropriate to use CDFA® and how that might look.
Who Should Hire a CDFA®
In my last video I talked a little bit, very briefly, about what is a CDFA® or a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst®. In this video I want to deep dive a little bit into who can a CDFA® serve and who is best to hire a CDFA® as part of their divorce team.
The first question you have to ask yourself is ‘do you have property’, a CDFA® specifically is a part of the divorce when it comes to property being divided. So, if you do not have any property; don’t own a home, you don’t own a car, you have no bank accounts, maybe you’re newly married and it just didn’t work out and you don’t own anything together and you decide to separate, in those situations a CDFA® is really not beneficial to you. There’s not much we can do for you as far as being hired in the process. Now if you have some of those things and you’re saying ‘OK what level of those things do I need to have before CDFA® is beneficial to me’ in my opinion, in the years that I’ve had in both divorce and financial planning, in general anybody with some assets, whether it’s just a house, or just some cash, or just brokerage accounts, or a combination of all those things, it is always a good idea to at least have a consultation with a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst. The reason that I say that is because you’re going through a transition and it’s always helpful to have some level of information and education about the decisions that you’re making in the process. A Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® should be able to give you kind of a road map of whether or not it is valuable to hire them during the process or not. One of the things you have to be very careful about and just understand is that when you’re doing a negotiation, when you’re doing your divorce, when you sign an agreement whether it’s the final decree or it’s just that mediated settlement agreement, once you sign an agreement on property it is done you cannot go back and fix it. There are certain things in a divorce that are modifiable, child things typically are modifiable, but property division is not. So, you really have one chance to make sure that it is right. That is where CDFA® can come in to make sure that you’re making educated informed decisions about the property division.
So, who can a CDFA® help? They really can help anybody with property. I would encourage you to reach out to your local CDFA® and talk with them to find out if it’s necessary to have them brought into the overall process. Thanks, and if you have more questions, you can always reach out to us at Next Step Divorce Solutions.
