Leah Hadley [00:00:01]:
Welcome to Intentional Divorce Insights. I'm Leah Hadley, certified divorce financial analyst, accredited financial counselor, and the founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions. I'll be your guide through the complexities of divorce, finance and emotional wellness. Join me as we uncover practical tips and empowering insights to help you navigate your divorce with clarity and intention.
Leah Hadley [00:00:24]:
Hi there. I want to start with a question today. If your marriage ended tomorrow, could you tell me specifically where your money is? Not in a general sense, but specifically the accounts, the balances, how everything is titled, what you own separately, what you own jointly. Now, if you hesitated even for a moment, this episode is for you. And if you answered yes with complete confidence, I still want you to stay because I'm going to share a story today that is going to make you want to pick up the phone and call everybody, every woman that you love. Welcome back to Intentional Divorce Insights. If you are new here, I'm Leah Hadley, and I'm so glad that you found this show. I am a financial planner, a certified divorce financial analyst, an accredited financial counselor, a mediator, and the founder of Intentional Divorce Solutions and Intentional Wealth Partners, based out of Northeast Ohio.
Leah Hadley [00:01:24]:
I have spent the better part of the last decade sitting across from women and men at some of the most financially vulnerable moments of their lives, helping them to understand what they have, what they're entitled to, and how to build something solid on the other side. Now, this show exists because divorce is one of the most financially consequential events of a person's life. And most people walk into it completely unprepared. Not because they're not smart. Let's be clear about that. Not because they didn't care, but because no one ever taught them what to look for, what questions to ask, what their rights actually are. That is what we do here. Now, if you've been listening for a while, welcome back.
Leah Hadley [00:02:12]:
And I want to take a moment to acknowledge that this is the start of a new season. And I have been doing a lot of thinking about where this show goes next, what conversations matter most, and how to make sure that that every episode you spend time with is genuinely useful to your real life. Now, this season is going to reflect that more depth, more of the conversations that just don't get had anywhere else, and more of the financial clarity that I believe every single woman deserves. I could not think of a better way to open this season than with the conversation that I've been having in my head all week long, because there's a book out that, quite frankly, the entire country is talking about right now. And underneath all of that cultural conversation. There's a financial story that I just can't stop thinking about. The book is called Stragners: A Memoir of Marriage. It's by Belle Burden, and if you've not heard of it yet, you will.
Leah Hadley [00:03:15]:
It debuted number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Netflix has already bought the rights to it. It's everywhere, so you'll hear about it. The book is Belle Burden's account of the end of a 20 year marriage. It talks about her husband's affair, it talks about the betrayal, the unraveling of a life she thought that she understood. And it is beautifully written, it is raw, it is honest, and I really understand why it has resonated so widely. But I'm a cdfa, and when I read the book, of course, I could not stop thinking not about the affair, but the financial story that was underneath.
Leah Hadley [00:03:55]:
Because underneath the heartbreak and the drama and the Martha's Vineyard beautiful backdrop, strangers is actually one of the most important financial cautionary tales that I have read in years. And I don't say that to minimize the emotional story. I want to be clear about that. I say it because the financial story is the part that most of the coverage right now is kind of glossing over. And honestly, it's the part that I think will affect the most lives. So today I want to walk you through what actually happened, why it matters, far beyond Belle Burden's circumstances and what you can do right now, whether you are married, you're divorcing, or you're somewhere in between. Now, before I get into the financial details, I got to set something up for you. So you have a little background.
Leah Hadley [00:04:46]:
So I do think it's important that this is part of kind of a whole conversation. Right. So Belle Burden is not who most people picture when they imagine a woman who loses financial control in a marriage, quite frankly. She was the daughter of a prominent New York family. She was educated as an attorney and worked at a prestigious law firm. When she first started her career, she was. She was accomplished, she was intelligent, and really, by every external measure, a woman who had the resources and the credentials that should have protected her. Now, I want you to hold that image in your mind as I walk through what happened.
Leah Hadley [00:05:24]:
Because if you find yourself thinking, well, that could never happen to me, I want the picture of Belle Burnin to be your reminder that it can really happen to anybody. And it does every single day, across every single income level. And that's important to understand. So let's walk through the financial dynamics in the book that really stop me in My tracks. Okay, the first one is the prenuptial agreement. Now, Bell Burden came into her marriage with a prenup. It had been designed to protect the generational wealth that her family had built. It was a legal document that clearly defined what was hers separate from the marriage.
Leah Hadley [00:06:08]:
Now, in the days just before her wedding, at her husband's request, she agreed to modify the document. That modification changed the terms so that only jointly held assets would be divided in a divorce. And I get it, Belle shares in her in her memoir that, you know, she really felt this was a gesture of trust and a demonstration of her commitment to the marriage, and so she signed that document. What she maybe didn't fully recognize or acknowledge at that point was what she was giving up in case the marriage did terminate. The legal protection that had really been built around her separate property was gone with the modification. And she's not going to necessarily feel the weight of that decision until, you know, decades later when she's actually looking at. Looking faced with a divorce. So I want to pause here because I do think that prenuptial agreements carry so much emotional weight that people have a hard time thinking clearly about them.
Leah Hadley [00:07:14]:
Okay. Asking for a prenup is not a lack of faith in your partner. I want to be very clear about that. I'm going to say that again. Asking for a prenup is not a lack of faith in your partner. It is a documented conversation about reality. Right. And modifying a prenup at the request of a partner, especially just days before a wedding, when people's emotions are high, there's a lot of pressure that they're feeling.
Leah Hadley [00:07:44]:
Something I just really want every woman listening to be very, very careful about. Okay, now, the second thing that I want to talk about is the commingling of assets. Using money from her own trust funds, she purchased the couple's two primary homes. So she put both of their names on both of those properties. Now, here, here's the legal reality of what that means. When you take separate property money that was yours before the marriage or maybe that you had inherited or was maybe gifted to you during the marriage, and you use it as an asset that you title jointly, you could potentially be converting your separate property into marital property. Now, under the law in most states, that allows your spouse to have a claim on that particular asset, even if they may have not contributed anything to that purchase.
Leah Hadley [00:08:37]:
So her husband didn't contribute anything to those homes. But would later claim half of those values in the divorce proceedings. This is one of the most common and costly mistakes that I see. You know, women who bring significant assets into the marriage, assets that were clearly theirs, and who in gestures of partnerships and love, put everything into joint ownership or maybe take their, their separate property assets and pay off their partner's debt. I see that a lot. And then faced divorce not knowing that the law does not always recognize, you know, the distinctions. Right. And the third is the career, the career sacrifice.
Leah Hadley [00:09:20]:
Belle describes the unspoken bargain in their marriage pretty clearly. You know, her husband would work constantly. He was really committed to his career, supporting the family, financially, generating the household income. And she was really focused more on managing the household and the, the social kind of infrastructure of their life. She stepped away from her law career to really make that arrangement work. Then when she was looking at the end of her marriage, she didn't have the same professional footing to return to, have a recent work history, shouldn't have any income of her own. And I see this constantly.
Leah Hadley [00:09:59]:
I want to be clear that I am not in any way saying that women should not make choices to step back from their careers for their family. That is not what I'm saying. That is a deeply personal decision and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. What I am saying is that the financial consequences of that decision have to be part of that conversation. Explicitly and honestly. There should be no unspoken assumptions here. Right? We know what assumptions do. Right.
Leah Hadley [00:10:27]:
Too often it just doesn't happen. And honestly, it's what inspired me to write the first book that I wrote, which was When It's Just Not Working, A Practical Divorce Guide for Stay At Home Moms. We'll include the link in the show notes for that. But women who stay home, who take that break from their careers, they're just particularly vulnerable. And if you are stepping away from your career for your marriage and family, there's got to be a clear financial plan that accounts for that sacrifice. It should be reflected in your settlement. If the marriage ends right, it should be part of your estate planning. It should not stay simply just evaporate because it was never written down.
Leah Hadley [00:11:08]:
All right. And the fourth financial issue that I want to address specifically from the book is financial invisibility. Despite being the source of significant wealth, Ms. Burden did not have a full picture of their financial life. She didn't know where all the money was, how their assets were structured, or she what her husband was actually accumulating separately in his own name. She had submitted monthly line by line justification of her credit card spending to her husband while he was just like quietly building up wealth in the background that she knew nothing about. She was, in the language of the book and in the way that I think about it, professionally, a stranger to her own financial life. And that invisibility didn't happen overnight.
Leah Hadley [00:11:53]:
It happened gradually. Right. It was those small daily choices to defer, to trust, to let him handle it. None of which were unreasonable in isolation. All of which added up to a woman who didn't know what she had until she needed to fight for it. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking this is a story with trust funds and Manhattan real estate and Martha Vineyard summers. That's just not my life.
Leah Hadley [00:12:22]:
And I hear that, but I'm also going to push back on it a little bit. The specific numbers in Belle Burden's story are not everybody's numbers. Fine. Absolutely. That is true. But the dynamics. I see those dynamics at absolutely every income level. I work with teachers, I work with social workers, I work with executives.
Leah Hadley [00:12:44]:
Women in modest households and women with eight figure estates. Women who gave up careers as nurses and women who gave up careers as attorneys. And I see the same patterns across all of them. The invisible partner, the career sacrifice, the commingled assets, the unspoken financial arrangement. Arrangement that maybe felt like a partnership, but left one person completely in the dark. The detail, scale, the dynamic doesn't. And here's the thing that keeps me up at night as a professional. Who does this work every day? The women who come to me at the beginning of a divorce are often encountering their own financial lives, their full financial picture for the very first time.
Leah Hadley [00:13:32]:
They are learning in the worst possible moment, under the worst possible pressure, what they own, what they owe and what they're entitled to. And it just doesn't have to be that way. So let me give you something very practical. Five questions. These are the questions that I want every single woman listening to be able to answer about her own financial life. And this is not to scare you. I want to be clear about this, not to make you distrust your partner. That is not the goal here.
Leah Hadley [00:14:00]:
But because you deserve to know. Because financial clarity is not a threat to a good marriage. It's a foundation of one. Right? So question one. Do you know where your money is? Not generally, but specifically the names of the financial institutions, the account numbers, the balances. How do you access those funds? If you needed to compile a complete picture of your household finances tomorrow, would you be able to do that without asking your spouse? Question number two. Do you know how your assets are titled? Separate property and marital property are legal distinctions that carry enormous consequences.
Leah Hadley [00:14:47]:
A home purchased with your inheritance but titled jointly may no longer be yours in the way you think it is, right? Do you know how your home is titled? Your investment accounts, your retirement accounts? Do you know which assets are in your name alone, which are in joint and which are in your spouse's name alone? Do you have a prenuptial agreement? And are you considering your prenup agreement when deciding how to title various assets? Question number three. Are you involved in financial decisions? Being aware of what you spend is not the same as understanding how your household builds wealth. When was the last time you sat in on a meeting with your financial planner as an equal participant? Do you understand how your retirement accounts are invested? Do you know your overall household net worth? Question number four. Do you have your own financial identity, your own credit history, your own accounts, your own professional standing or income, even if it's modest? Not because you don't trust your partner. I want to be clear about that. It's not about trust, right? Because you are a complete financial person. You are not a dependent. Your credit score should exist, right? Your name should be on accounts.
Leah Hadley [00:16:08]:
You should be able to demonstrate a financial history, that is your financial history. And then the last question is, have you read your own legal documents? If you have a prenuptial agreement, it's so important that you understand the content of that agreement and make decisions about how to title assets appropriately in alignment with that agreement, right? Your estate planning documents, your beneficiary designations on your retirement account and your life insurance, these documents are your documents, right? They're not your attorney's documents. They're not your financial planners documents. These are your documents. And it's so imperative that you understand what they say, right? You sign them. And if you found yourself uncertain of any of the questions that I just went through, I want to be very, very clear. That is not a personal failing, okay? It's an invitation. That is not a personal failing.
Leah Hadley [00:17:04]:
It is an invitation. It is an invitation to take the rightful space in your financial life. I also want to speak just for a moment for the women who are listening who are currently in the middle of a divorce. Financial invisibility in a marriage, it doesn't disappear when the marriage ends. It often actually becomes the central challenge of the divorce process. If you don't have a clear picture of what your household is worth, how your assets are titled, or what your spouse may have accumulated separately from you, you could be at a real disadvantage when it comes to negotiating a settlement that really serves your long term financial security. And that is exactly why working with a certified divorce financial analyst or a CDFA matters. Not just to run the numbers, but to help you see the full financial picture of your marriage.
Leah Hadley [00:18:02]:
Often it's the first time for so many people and to really add, advocate for an outcome that reflects the reality of your contributions, your sacrifices and what you're entitled to. And if that's where you're at right now, I just want to encourage you to reach out. This work is exactly what my team does every single day. And honestly, it's some of the most meaningful work that we do. Now I want to close with something that really stayed with me from the book. Near the end of Strangers, she talks about what she found on the other side of her divorce. She talks about a sense of freedom, freedom that came from being fully in charge of her own life, from knowing where she stood, from not having to ask permission or justify herself or wonder what was happening with her own money. She found in the wreckage of a marriage that cost her enormously, a version of herself that was financially whole.
Leah Hadley [00:19:01]:
And I don't want that to be the hard version of the lesson for anyone listening to this episode. Right? Because that clarity that, that wholeness, that sense of being fully present in your own financial life that is available to each and every one of you right now. Not after a betrayal, not after a divorce. Now, you deserve to know where your money is. You deserve to know how your wealth is built. Right? You deserve to be a full participant in your own financial life. Not as a stranger, but somebody who belongs there. Right? I want to thank you for spending the time with me today, and welcome to a new season of Intentional Divorce Insights.
Leah Hadley [00:19:47]:
Before you go though, a few things. If today's episode resonated with you, I would love for you to share it with a woman in your life who needs to hear it. You know who she is. I also want to let you know that I recently published a book, Intentional the Modern Woman's Guideline to Building Wealth, Purpose, and Peace. If what we talked about today really sparked something for you, that book goes deep on the financial framework I use with clients and so you can find that wherever books are sold. But we'll be sure to include a link in the show notes if you are navigating divorce and really want to understand your full financial picture. To learn more about our services go to www.greatlakesdfs.com and again, I'll include that link in the show notes. And certainly, last but absolutely not least, if you are building a financial life and want a community of women who are doing the work.
Leah Hadley [00:20:42]:
I would love to have you check out the Empowered Sisterhood Community, which we will also include a link to in the show. Notes I will be back next week with another episode, so until then, please take good care of yourself and your financial life.
Leah Hadley [00:20:57]:
Thank you for joining me on Intentional Divorce Insights.
Leah Hadley [00:21:00]:
It's a privilege to share this time with you.
Leah Hadley [00:21:03]:
I hope each episode offers valuable guidance
Leah Hadley [00:21:05]:
to navigate your journey. If you find our content helpful, please
Leah Hadley [00:21:09]:
leave a review to help others discover the benefits of intentional decision making in divorce. Until next time, take care and continue to embrace your path with intention.
