Ep. 55 Empowering women through divorce both financially and emotionally (with special guest Jamie Lima)

What if you could prevent the financial heartache and stress often associated with divorce? Join me and my guest Jamie Lima, a CFP® and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA®), as we break down the essential differences between a CDFA and a Certified Financial Planner (CFP®) and how a CDFA® can guide you through the financial maze of a divorce.

Early intervention can save you from unnecessary expenses and emotional turmoil. Jamie and I discuss the importance of timing when seeking financial expertise before hiring attorneys, and how societal norms often leave women out of financial decision-making, impacting their divorce proceedings. Through our conversation, you’ll learn about the benefits of mediation and strategic financial planning, and how slowing down to make informed decisions can lead to a more stable transition during this significant life change. We also delve into the unique challenges faced by entrepreneurs and the importance of gathering all necessary information before making settlements.

In this episode we discuss:

• Difference between a CDFA® and CFP®
• The emotional aspects of divorce
• We explore how men and women handle financial decisions differently 
• The limitations of the court system in managing financial intricacies
• My Priorities Worksheet developed by Jamie and his team (https://allegiantds.com/resources)

If you would like to learn more about Jamie, you can connect with him via his website here (https://allegiantds.com) or on his podcast Broke Up, Not Broke(n) (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/broke-up-not-broke-n/id1743860479)

Compassionate financial mentor and guide to female entrepreneurs so that they have peace of mind and fun with their money in order to live life now and in the future.

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As always, thanks for listening.

From my soul to yours.
Erin

Transcript

Erin Gray: 0:00

You're listening to Generate a Life Well-Lived podcast. I'm your friend and confidant, erin Gray. I'm a former certified financial planner, turned human design, financial mentor and guide to entrepreneurs. I believe our money and our business can only thrive at the level of our emotional wellbeing. I empower entrepreneurs to feel confident with their money and in their business so that they can have fun now and in the future. On this podcast, we will explore all things money, business and self-development, including human design. I hope you enjoy the journey where I share everything that I know and am continuing to learn along the way, as I honor my heart's desires while inspiring and encouraging you to do the same. Hi, how are you this week? So I missed you guys. Last week. I did not put out an episode.

Erin Gray: 0:46

Last Sunday, jason, my husband, was mountain biking up in the mountain where we go and ski in the wintertime and he was going too fast. He his foot slipped off of his pedal, he hit the crossbar, I'm sure he did some acrobatics and he landed on his back and he I don't know how he got home. It's a probably an hour hour 15 minute drive home, but he said I just asked myself how do I get to the next stop sign, how do I get to the next stoplight? And so by the time he got home and I was um talking to a friend when I got off of the call, he was laying on the floor because that was the only place he could lay. So we spent the last week I've spent the last week probably playing a little bit of a nurse and all the things up in the middle of the night, um, for those first couple of nights, because he just could not get out of bed. Taking a shower was difficult for him. So it's been a week and I always think that everything is happening for us and one of the things that I think what it showed me is that I could do is say no when I want to say no, and we've had very honest conversations that you know you get to go and play and do all of the crazy things and if you continue to injure yourself, I may not be the person that's going to be your nurse, and that's okay. So I'm grateful for the experience. You know, I always think that things happen for a reason and they show us probably what needs to come up and be worked through and healed, and so so here we are, so I'm happy to be back on this week's podcast.

Erin Gray: 2:37

I have interviewed Jamie Lima. He is a certified divorce financial analyst and he helps mainly women through divorce in an empowered, easy, educational way. So let's dive into the conversation that Jamie and I had about divorce, money, understanding how to navigate divorce and all the other fun facts that we discussed on our podcast. Hey, hey, my friends, how are we today? So on today's podcast, we're going to talk about divorce and just things that this is, to be honest, this is a complete, probably podcast educational for me because, uh, I it's been 20 something years since I've been divorced and I did not have the assets that I have now, and so it's just an interesting conversation to have, and so I brought on Jamie Lima, who is a certified divorce Is it financial analyst? Okay, um, and so we're going to dive into, like, what is the difference from a CDFA to a CFP and things to consider when getting divorced, and just, yeah, it's going to be a learning experience for me too. So thanks, jamie, for coming on and sharing your time with us Totally welcome.

Jamie Lima: 3:52

Glad to be here.

Erin Gray: 3:53

So let's dive in. So tell us what is the difference between a CDFA and then a CFP?

Jamie Lima: 3:59

Great question.

Erin Gray: 3:59

So, CDFAs.

Jamie Lima: 4:01

Think of a CDFA a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst as someone that helps you point in time with your divorce, all the financial nuances of your divorce, point in time, right Like there's a day when you decide that you're going to get divorced. That's when you should be calling us so we can help. Or maybe, even before you say those words to your significant other, you should be calling someone like myself to help triage your situation, get an understanding of what's at stake and maybe start thinking through different strategies you're going to want to employ and so on, before you drop the dreaded D word. So we'll, and as a CDFA we'll hold your hand all the way through the divorce proceedings until effectively you are, they give you the stamp of approval and they give you the congratulations You're divorced is what I got from the judge in my case. And then there's also a little bit of a transition. We do what's called transition assistance after the divorce is finalized. So you may have to divide up retirement accounts, you may have to divide up a brokerage account.

Jamie Lima: 5:03

You may have to hire a realtor and put the house on the market for sale and then figure out what to do with those proceeds. Later We'll work with our clients to help them navigate the transition after divorce into their newfound lifestyle. So it's day one of divorce all the decisions you have to make along the way. We'll also help with the calculations of things like child support, alimony, understanding the after-tax valuation of the assets you have, because taxes are taken into consideration in a lot of instances in divorce. We'll work with you on strategy of what do I want to keep, what do I want to give up, and so on. So there's all those decisions you have to make in divorce. That's what we'll. We'll help you with all the financial.

Jamie Lima: 5:45

We stay I stay out of the legal realm. I am not an attorney. I don't want to be one. We work with a lot of amazing attorneys, but we we. So we stay in our lane on the financial side and we let the attorneys stay in their lane on the financial no-transcript to do.

Jamie Lima: 6:13

Do they have a 401k? You know how? Are they investing in it, and all of those types of questions and planning around those things right? So there is some goal setting and getting an understanding of what the client really wants in the end, just like we would do in a traditional financial planning engagement as CFPs, as certified financial planners. But I always tell people like the CFP I start to wear my CFP hat once we get closer to the end and we start figuring out like, okay, what does the next 5, 10, 20 years of your life look like? The CDFA work helps us make decisions today, make the best financial decisions we can, but also melding them together, both designations and both levels of experience that I have allows me to say, okay, hey, aaron, if you're going to make this decision today, this is what's going to do five, 10, 20 years in the future for you, right? So there's, there's uh, there's definitely some blurred lines between the both roles, but that's effectively how the two differ.

Erin Gray: 7:13

Yeah, so do you work with? If somebody already has a financial planner, do you work with them at all? Or how does that work for it? Because in the middle of divorce, right Like you're trying to, you know, calculate assets and things, things of that sort. So is it kind of a collaboration if they don't, if they already have an advisor, Is that something that you kind of look at? Or you're just kind of taking financial statements and kind of just looking at just kind of inventory and things of that sort?

Jamie Lima: 7:39

We'll. We'll work with anybody who is on the team. Okay, right, we are. I am not here. So if you're a financial planner who is listening to this, we are not here to steal your clients. Yeah, we are here to put your clients in a much better financial position moving forward. So when the dust is settled on the divorce and they do have some assets that need to be managed or they do need help figuring out what their financial future looks like, we hand them off to you and you're run with it. So we work very collaboratively with um I, I call it team. You right like yeah, you're a therapist, you're a financial planner, you're a tax person, you're attorney. Sometimes you're a state planning attorney, depending on how. What's, what's at stake there, all of it. We want your divorce coach. We want to work with everybody. We are not here to poach anybody's clients. We we are here to make sure that, when the dust has settled, you can look back and go wow, that was. It was a little bit of an investment, but it was well worth the while.

Erin Gray: 8:35

Yeah, and if they don't have an advisor, then, because you do wear the CFP hat, you could just naturally transition into taking care of them and helping them. After all the dust is settled, sign on the dotted line and like okay, now, now, what do we want to do and what do we want to create?

Jamie Lima: 8:50

Absolutely, it makes. It makes a hundred percent. It makes a hundred percent. You know, I mean um, spot on where, when you've been working with us for six months, maybe a year, maybe longer, unfortunately, if the divorce is taking time you start to build a rapport and a relationship with people and people start to feel more comfortable with you and they recognize, like wow, like they really are here to help. They're not here to take my money. Um, and that's that's always the approach we have. Um, it's a natural segue into traditional retirement planning and cause we already know where all the bodies are buried, right, and we already, we've already have an inventory of the statement. You know the accounts and so on and so forth. So it's a it's a natural segue, for sure.

Erin Gray: 9:26

Yeah.

Erin Gray: 9:27

So you already kind of mentioned this of like okay, if you like, if you already know you are getting divorced, like it might like when do clients typically come to you and when would you suggest that clients?

Erin Gray: 9:38

You know, I kind of take from the emotional standpoint right Like nothing needs to be hurried, nothing needs to be rushed, and also from a planning perspective, right Like before you're like, hey, we're done, you know it might make some sense to come and call Jamie and be like, hey, this is kind of what we're pondering and I and I also to each of you listening like divorce, I think has such a bad rap, at least in the Western society.

Erin Gray: 10:00

Right Like you hear about everybody having like contentious divorces, and like you're fighting over money and like you're using children to pit against each other and it's just like how can we do it in the most loving way? Right Like to ourselves, to the people that we at some point in time. Right Like there was something that we loved about that person, right, so like doing that from a place of of love and nourishing, and like how can everyone win? Versus? Like I think sometimes money gets to be like the bargaining chip, right Versus like how do I want to take care of and how do I want to be while I'm going through this divorce?

Jamie Lima: 10:32

There's a lot to unpack there. For sure we can do a whole other episode on. You know using financial tools and and using finances as a weapon, and you know parental alienation and all the other stuff that goes on in these cases, that that are effectively just used to create more tension in in within divorce. But the the the first part of the question was when? When should somebody reach out? I tell people all the time we should be the first call. If you're thinking because this, especially in 99% of the people we work with, are women, okay, mainly because and I'm I believe this wholeheartedly now that I've been doing this for so long Women are much smarter than men. That's just. That's just how it goes.

Erin Gray: 11:14

Men, I love you men.

Jamie Lima: 11:16

I love you dudes too. I love you. I love you bros too. But let me tell you, let me.

Jamie Lima: 11:20

There are so many women that reach out because they recognize that maybe, if they let their emotions get involved there and they don't, and a lot of them don't they never were the financial decision maker in the household. Right, that's just the unfortunate as it is. That's how. That's how society has really worked. You see this in your own life too, right? Like so many times I've had a conversation with clients. I've been doing this almost 20 years and so many times we have these conversations and it's the dude who is the chief financial officer of the home making all the decisions, and the wife is along for the ride, and then the next thing, you know, they decide they're going to get a divorce and she's clueless yeah. So if that's you, ladies, you need to stop that. You need to start taking ownership of the financial situation in the household.

Jamie Lima: 12:06

But getting back to the question, the reason why I say reaching out to us first is because the mistake that most people make is they pick up the phone as soon as they decide they want a divorce and they call their attorney. They call an attorney or they call multiple attorneys and then they settle on one and the next thing you know they've paid $10,000 retainer and all that $10,000 does is get them through the initial stages of filing for the divorce and gathering some information and so on. And then pretty soon the attorney's calling for another $10,000 retainer because they actually have to fight the divorce or they have to go through and be taken through mediation and you're burning money unnecessarily. Now I understand there's certain situations where it's just going to be heavily contentious and there's no way around going through this without an attorney. But at least let us help you with that decision.

Jamie Lima: 12:55

I can see we have complimentary conversations with people all day long. I'm in three to five conversations like that every day where it's like okay, tell me more about what's going on and let me figure out how to help you and what your next best step is. And sometimes it's hiring a divorce attorney. Sometimes it's why don't you hire us first? Let's see where all the financial information? Get all the financial information together, let's start building out some different strategies, some things you're going to need to think about, and then, if it's going to get really complicated, we'll bring in an attorney at that point and we'll bring them up to speed.

Jamie Lima: 13:30

But the mistake people make all the time is making calling an attorney first and I'm going to make some enemies in this call based on the comments about the dudes earlier and this one coming up about attorneys. But many times attorneys are there to rack up the billable hours. Can you imagine? Think about you specifically you, aaron, like you're a CFP. You've been doing this for a long time. There's a lot that you have to understand about the world of finance to do the work that we do.

Erin Gray: 13:59

Yeah.

Jamie Lima: 14:00

Those attorneys are not trained to do that work, Just like I'm not trained to create interrogatories and take people through depositions and things of that nature. Let's just all stay in our lane. Attorneys are notorious for trying to come over to the financial side and all that does is burn money. Does that make sense?

Erin Gray: 14:20

That makes a lot of sense. I'm pondering this as like and I know Jamie said I'm a CFP, I used to be, and I also know, like, how much you know, like you're saying, how much time and effort and education that goes into that. And also, like you said, like if and I think it comes from a genuine place, right, like maybe the attorneys are wanting to help their clients, you know, with that, but it's also like also can we stay in our lane and like what do we do really well? And attorneys do attorney stuff really well, right, and letting you, like you're saying, letting you do the, the financial and the and, like you said, like you also do mediation, right, so like, maybe we don't even need like. I think that is like the first like thing we go to is like I need an attorney, it's like, but an attorney can be from the place of like we're not even getting along. Nothing is like. If you have a, what do you call it? The opposite of contentious, like a contested.

Erin Gray: 15:15

Yeah, okay, you know, like if you're on speaking terms and you can do some mediation, like how much, like you're talking about, how much that can save you in emotional turmoil and also financial, if you just kind of, you're kind of like a one-stop shop in that regard. You know, like you you've got all that already rolled in, you know like you are the mediator and you are able to look at the finances.

Jamie Lima: 15:40

And, and it wants a CFP, always a CFP. By the way, you're always going to think of the CFP brain, right? But you know, as a CFP, always a CFP. By the way, you're always going to think of the CFP brain, right, that's true. But you know, as a CFP, we have a fiduciary standard we have to abide by. Yep. Part of that is providing, you know, avoiding conflicts of interest. Number one, and number two, giving the highest and best advice we possibly can give at any time. Yep, yep.

Jamie Lima: 16:02

So when people come to us and they go, the first question I ask always is what's on your mind? And then they go through the whole thing, right, they tell us what's going on, why they got to be in front of us, and so on and so forth, and then I can go, I can sit there and go. Okay, here's what I recommend. You know, like you come see me, come back and see me in three months, when you get this stuff sorted out, the first thing you need to go through is family therapy, or you need to make sure you're in a safe place, because we work with a lot of people that are going through domestic violence situations or financial abuse and so on, and we've got to get that safe first.

Jamie Lima: 16:34

Our work. We're not going anywhere. I've been doing this 20 years, so I can wait three months for somebody to hire us, but I can help triage them and figure out which was the best direction to go. If they take our advice, great. If not, at least they have some more education. But the mediation piece is amazing. I have a couple that I'm working with. We're starting our first session tonight with them and the plan is that we have three sessions back to back. We have a I'm sorry we have a session tonight and then we have two scheduled for next week by Thursday of next week. We're recording this on a Tuesday, so within 10 days they're going to have the documents they need in an agreement in place to be divorced and it's going to cost them less than 2000 bucks.

Erin Gray: 17:14

That's amazing, yeah, and you think about and I think this is also like knowledge, right, like when I said at the very beginning of the podcast it's like part of this is like also me learning about this, because maybe that existed 20 years ago for me I have no idea Like that was just, like I was just like I asked my financial planner, like, okay, give me some names of attorneys and let me go. Like you just said, let me go interview them, and then that was my next step, versus no, this is now an actual option for you, and maybe you do end up going with an attorney, but at least you have the education and the knowledge that this is, this actually exists out there and that it can be, uh, and it can be an easeful process, right, like. This goes back to like, how do we want to be in our divorce? Do we want to string it out? Do we want to play the power play or do we want to be like you know what? We don't get along anymore? We've agreed on that and we want, you know, to separate and not no longer share our lives together.

Erin Gray: 18:06

And also, what is, what is a way that we can do that in the, in the when I say least amount of time, you know what I mean Like we don't have to drag it out, it doesn't have to be like that. So do you want to share you know, some of you kind of, in a way, done that already like some of your experiences, like, do you have a lot of people that come in and it is contentious, but you just shared this one client who's like you know what, in 10 days we'll be done? And, um, like to the listener, what would you advise or what would you ask them to consider when it comes time for a divorce? And what you have seen, I guess let's say that I, I will.

Jamie Lima: 18:42

This isn't? That's another great question. I had a conversation with somebody yesterday about this and I think my my, looking back at my own divorce, my biggest mistake was was first calling the attorney. You know, sorry, he's a great, amazing man. He's amazing attorney. He helped me through this process. We're still friends to this day. So he actually came to my wedding. I'm remarried. Since remarried, he my divorce attorney was at my wedding, so that tells you how close we were. But, um, you know, I, I, the first mistake I made was to call, call someone like that, and mine was very contentious. It was very heated, it was. I was promised that it was going to be very expensive and and and that came to fruition. Um, but I, I mentioned team you earlier and that you're, you know, your therapist, your friends and family, you're, you know, making your workplace aware of what's going on so they can help support you.

Erin Gray: 19:34

Yeah.

Jamie Lima: 19:35

Getting your attorneys, getting your CDFAs you know all the people like surrounding you. Looking through who you're the closest people are to you, the most important people to you and putting them on notice and getting them, you know, getting them on team you. One of the biggest mistakes I made along the way was was not doing that and also shutting out my family. I wanted to make sure for me it was a way for me to protect them.

Erin Gray: 20:01

You mean like your extended, you mean like your mom. Yeah, you know mom and dad.

Jamie Lima: 20:04

Yeah, you know mom and dad, you know sister, you know aunts and uncles, cousins, you know that type of thing. Yeah, we had a very close family and when I, when I decided I wanted a divorce, I was like I'm just gonna, I'm gonna keep them out of it, like here's what's happening, letting you know I'm good, and I didn't bring them up to speed on it. It was. It was definitely a shock for them because I just had played along Like everything was amazing for years, when I knew, probably three years prior, that I had wanted a divorce, and by shutting them out, not only did it, did I lose support that I needed at the time, but it also allowed for opportunities for some alienation to come into play. So my ex-spouse reached out to my family, got her claws in them and the next thing you know like, told all kinds of stories that weren't true and everything else, and I lost some family relationships because of that.

Jamie Lima: 20:56

So had I just swallowed my pride a little bit and and and shoved my ego to the side and said, hey guys, listen, this is what's happening. I want you to know I'm okay, I'm going to, I'll keep you posted. Let's talk this through and and let them be more involved in my, my life, I think I would have done a better job. Things would have went better. All that stuff has been sorted out now. You know cause it's been. We're, we're seven years, you know after the fact, but, uh, but I see a lot of people do that and they, they, they think they're going to try to do it on their own and because they're, you know, for whatever reason, right it's, it's really vulnerable to say you know what, like, I need some help.

Erin Gray: 21:35

Like I remember my dad telling me he's like Aaron, I know how you feel about medicine, but maybe it's time that you actually like go to a therapist and talk to somebody. And actually, you know, like that was 20 years ago, you know like, but still you know like maybe you might actually need a little bit of help. And it's okay, right, like I think we're changing as society and consciousness like it's okay to seek out help. It's okay to say you know what, I'm really sad, I, I, you know, I, I need help. Um, but like, yeah, like you say, it's like it's that vulnerability, it's our little egos that are like I've got this and all of that. And like you say, like it can alienate us, it can you know we can feel not supported, things of that sort.

Erin Gray: 22:13

The other thing I wanted to comment and this is just a comment, not so much a question is like, well, let me back up. It may be a question of like, how many of you, how many you know? People come to you and they are like rushing to get divorced, and what I want to say to you, if this is you one of the things is we're rushing because we're going for a feeling Right. And so once I learned like we don't have to rush through anything, right, like the reason why we want it to hurry up and be over is because we're looking for, we're trying to get rid of a feeling that we're feeling, versus allowing those feelings to be there and also knowing like you can choose every single day, every single moment, you can choose how you want to feel. Versus okay, well, if you cause I wrote down this when you and I were talking before it's like get it over with mindset, right, like let's just hurry up and just get this over with.

Erin Gray: 23:02

Versus how do I want to be when I'm going through my divorce? Like, so asking yourself some questions like how do I actually want to be, how do I want my kids to remember me being to their mom or to their dad, right, during this divorce? Because I have been around several people that have, you know, gotten divorces lately and it is almost like the children know right, like they sense the energy, they know what's going on, and so I'm just curious if you have a lot of people that are like, okay, let's hurry up, let's get this over with, so we can just be done with it versus really taking the time to not dragging it out. Right, but like the rushing is because it's coming for like what can I? I don't like the feeling that I'm in right now. You know we now.

Jamie Lima: 23:44

We unfortunately have a few of those cases going on right now where I have to help them slow their roll, so to speak.

Erin Gray: 23:51

Yeah.

Jamie Lima: 23:54

Because with the work that we do, it takes time. If you were to tell me that you wanted to start working with us today, it's probably going to be two weeks for us to gather the information we need from you, cause we'll send it. We'll send a list like here are the 10 documents or the you know tax returns and statements and all that stuff. We'll gather all that, start uploading that information to your client portal, the secure portal we use, and then we need time to be able to review it, put it into our financial planning software, make sure we haven't made any mistakes along the way. We're documenting everything. We're crafting what we call a summary of findings document, which is basically a running tab of all the things that we some red flags or things we're going to want to talk about through the whole process. And if you do it the right way and you slow down, you take a beat and you follow the process, if you just follow the process, you're going to be in a much better situation than if you try to make hasty, hasty decisions just to get it. And I was there. I remember every time, every time my attorney would call and want me to pay another retainer. I'm like can we just get this over with? Yeah, right, but if you and that's even myself, I made some mistakes along the way by trying to speed up the process. So so our job now is to help people slow down, take a beat, understand that there is a process and there's a method to the madness to help them get through this.

Jamie Lima: 25:18

I've seen, I have a case right now where I, on Sunday, I'm sitting here watching golf on a Sunday and I get an email and a message that the, the settlement agreement has has been. You know, the framework for the agreement is in place. I look through this thing. Well, first off, we just started this process. So how do we have an agreement when we don't even know what we're agreeing to? We have no idea what's out there, we have no idea that we don't have any appraisal on the home, we don't have any of the information we need to be able to make a sound financial decision financial decisions. And then I also looked at the document and I sent her an email back with about 11 or 12 different things that were completely missed, overlooked, completely missing by the attorney and said, like you know, hey, I'm here to help you. Here's here's, a laundry list of things that need to be addressed. Are we doing this my way? Are we doing this some other random way? Because you're going to end up shooting yourself in the foot.

Erin Gray: 26:11

Yeah, and I think that that goes back to here we go with emotions right, like when you are in that heightened state of emotions if you're feeling anger, like I look back and I'm like I wouldn't have made some of the decisions that I made. I was angry, right, like that was the what was driving the decision, not from an emotionally neutral place and allowing yourself time to grieve and to feel sad and to like, how often are we, our emotions are so heightened that that actually is what the decisions are run off of, versus allowing yourself some space, slowing down, feeling what needs to be felt, right, and then coming from, like, prefrontal cortex, like you know, like, okay, I can make some decisions here. Versus are you? It's like, are you responding or are you reacting? You know, and I guess you would be way better at this but, like, what I've seen is a lot of people are going through a divorce.

Erin Gray: 27:02

It's very reactionary. And here we go back to like if you know that you can feel anything at any moment, then there's no need to rush through anything, because so, um, I'm curious from a business perspective, entrepreneurship, things of that sort because I have talked to people that want to get divorced. They own a business and it seems like fear also drives that decision of not, because they think like it's what you know, what is she going to take or what is you know, like you know for the business, and things of that sort. So to those that have a business that maybe are looking to get divorced, like what would you say to them?

Jamie Lima: 27:40

or advice or things that you see that yeah, If you're not working with somebody like me, they're in the course of a divorce and you're a business owner, you're doing yourself a disservice. Doing yourself a disservice Because, as a business owner myself, my wife and I actually run three businesses. I run two financial planning businesses and then we run a little Airbnb ourselves. So I understand the finances, the nuances of different entity types and the tax situations that go on, like things like retained earnings and how that factors into child support, alimony calculations and what counts, how to calculate some of those things and figure out, like, if I have $50, dollars worth of worth of retained earnings, does that count as income, does it not? Why should it? Why should it not?

Jamie Lima: 28:28

I'm a firm believer that it should not count as retained, uh earnings, because if you take every dollar out of the business that you have, you're not going to have a business um over time, uh, so. So there are little nuances like that. You know, like the entity setup, the ownership, the ownership, the equity in the company, all the stuff, all the legal nuances of it, the taxes oh man, there's a million things to talk about there. And then you know we have some small business owners that have things like ESOP plans, the employee stock ownership plans, things of that nature. If you're going to try to figure that out on your own, how to divide, how to divide that up in a divorce where you can let your attorney do it yeah, really Good luck.

Erin Gray: 29:11

Yeah, that's really good because it is. It's like and I've always looked at advisors of like I want to be the not smartest person in the room in regards to like, right, like, I want to surround myself with people that do this all day, every day, and they can give me different perspectives. Because here we go back to right Like, if you're coming from a heightened emotional state, you aren't going to be one, you may not even have the knowledge right To even ask the questions. And, two, you're not in that state to be like thinking clearly to be able to ask those questions. Um, I also wanted to talk about, uh, you mentioned about like women and men, and do you think that that comes back to? Because I would probably have to agree with you.

Erin Gray: 29:52

I don't know if I would say that women are smarter. I just think that they are like what I just said right, like I want to be surrounded by people Like they drop the ego, basically Right, like they're just like I want what's best for me, what's best for my children, and they think about that kind of stuff, versus looking at it from the lens or perspective of someone's trying to tell me what to do, or you know, you know, they know more than me, and then it's it's affecting their ego. So what would you say to the men that are listening, that what you've seen and other than you know, like, like, keep an open mind and like.

Jamie Lima: 30:29

What else would you say if, if you have any other advice, what we'd say to that I feel like you know you're, you hit the nail on the head with the ego piece Right and that's, and that's really, that's really what it comes down to.

Jamie Lima: 30:39

You know I see I and I I say women are smarter and say no, the, the there's, it's the whole IQ, eq, mars, venus thing that goes on in finance. And you know what? What I tell men, I'm like you need to drop the financial beer muscles and and and recognize that. Yeah Well, you know, like you ever hear the term beer muscles, right, Like you start, you know you have a couple of beers. It's like the old term when we were kids. You know you have a couple of beers. And the next thing, you know, like you're the strongest man in the room and nobody better mess with you right, so your beer muscles right okay

Jamie Lima: 31:17

if you and, uh, you know, if you have the financial beer muscles and you think you're got, you're mr tough guy when it comes to the finances because you got it all handled and you're the breadwinner and I have the 401k and I'm have the big fancy job at work and all this other stuff, you're missing the whole point of of not only the work we do, you're, you're totally missing out on what is going to happen to you in the court of law. You're misunderstood, you're. If the court system as it is right now is designed, was designed to prosecute criminals, we are now trying to sue each other to divorce and end our marriage through the same process. It is very laborious, it is very expensive. It normally doesn't go in men's favor, unfortunately, when and that's just that's just how it is right unfortunately it does not go in men's favor, unfortunately, and that's just how it is Unfortunately, it does not go in men's favor.

Jamie Lima: 32:17

It is slowly changing. There are a lot of states out there that are making it a lot more equal. They're reducing the amount of alimony payments and the length of alimony and things of that nature. They're telling women they need to get back on their feet and that's where, slowly, that whole dynamic is shifting. We're not quite to the point where it's perfect just yet. So the men that are out there, they're like, well, I'm gonna save the money because I'm probably gonna have to pay her more money. I'm just, you know, I'm already paying my attorney. They're, they're missing the whole point and and they're gonna I feel like they're going to look back and go shoulda, woulda, coulda, yeah, and you're making decisions today that are going to impact you for the rest of your life.

Erin Gray: 32:58

Yeah, absolutely, and you brought up a really good point about it's just like what we talked about the attorneys right, Like, the attorneys stay in their lane. Right, Like don't bring it over to the financial planning. The same thing with the court system, right, Like you said. Like here we are doing criminal stuff and we're trying to infuse, like it's like what did they say?

Jamie Lima: 33:17

Round, round, square peg and round hole or something like that Square peg round hole. Huh, exactly, yep, and we're trying to. When we have to get prepared for helping people go to court or we're in court ourselves, or and so on, you literally have to talk to the, you have to talk to the, you have to explain to these judges how some of this financial stuff works. Like a five or a five-year-old yeah, yeah, because they, they, and I'm the first one to say I'm never going to be the smartest person in the room and if I step into a courtroom, I am definitely not the smartest person in that room. But they don't. They're not. They don't understand this stuff. They don't understand the taxes, they don't understand the retained earnings. They don't understand the investments. They don't understand what is the difference between a mutual fund and an ETF. Yep, maybe they have experience with it?

Jamie Lima: 34:04

Probably not. Yeah, right, and it goes to your point earlier about whole staying. You know each other staying in their own lanes. Yeah, it's.

Jamie Lima: 34:16

It's kind of like if you you don't go to the doctor and go, you know, and try to triage yourself and figure out who the best specialist is for you, whatever ailment you have, right, you go to your family law practice.

Jamie Lima: 34:28

You go to your family practitioner, right, your mate, your primary physician, he's gonna, he or she's gonna do a once over on you, ask you some questions and go okay, here are the people that we need to talk to. We need to go to a cardiac person or a cardiologist or a or a uh or whatever, whatever, whatever it is, yep, they're not. But, and they're not going to try to do this, they're not going to try to diagnose you or do the work you know themselves. They're there to help you triage and figure out where you need to go. Next, they can do some of the work which is kind of kind of what we do, right, we triage people, we help them understand what the next steps are and help them through that process. Get them the attorneys if necessary. But you know, you know we can be the. We can be the financial specialist, so to speak, on the team.

Erin Gray: 35:09

Also too. I mean, I don't know if it's changed 20 years ago, but like we ended up actually going to court, right, like it's not fun to sit on the stand and to be grilled by. You know, like when you're in emotional distress, it doesn't feel very good to be grilled by the other attorney. And also, since it's a public thing, like anybody can walk in and sit down and listen to your court case. You know like, so just, those are even like things to be like, how can we do this in a private? You know, even if we don't have to be in the same room, right, when you mediate, right, you can go back and forth, but like how can we do this where it doesn't have to be? You know, you feel like you're like with the firing squad.

Erin Gray: 35:41

You know like I remember the attorney asking me like going through line by line, like expenses. You know like, why haven't you done this? And I'm like I justice, like being accused of, why haven't I done X, y, z? You know what I mean. Um, and so, yeah, like it's such a like you're saying there's so many different ways which for you being with you and doing the mediation, and kind of knowing all of the ins and outs like that's what you. It would seem like that would make the most sense and feel the most loving and nourishing right To our situation and that Anything else.

Erin Gray: 36:16

We talked about slowing down. I just am looking at my notes, not making any fast moves really being connected to ourselves. Anything else that you would comment or maybe I haven't asked questions about that we might've left off for people to consider- One of the first exercises we go through with everybody is we create what's called a my Priorities Worksheet.

Jamie Lima: 36:36

It's called a my Priorities Worksheet. It's available on our website for free and there's a whole bunch of resources on my website. I'm sure you're going to link to it.

Erin Gray: 36:43

Yep, I'll put everything in there for you. Go to.

Jamie Lima: 36:44

AllegiantDScom and there's on the free resources tab. There's a link to this worksheet. There's a bunch of tax information and we don't do the first name, last name, email thing. People can go to our website. They can pull the information for free. We have no idea they've been to the website. We don't collect contact information or anything. I love that it literally is for free.

Jamie Lima: 37:02

On this my Priorities worksheet, what we look at are three main areas. So we look at what my goals are and my priorities are relative to the kids, to the financials, and my priorities are relative to the kids, to the financials, and I'm drawing a blank on the third component of it. But workplace plans, the house things of that nature, the assets section, and, as a CFP, as you know, one of the first things we do with our financial planning clients is get understanding what their goals are. Why are they hiring us? Are we helping them put a plan in place to retire early, buy a rental property, make sure investments are on track, all of those things? What are the goals and objectives? It's the same thing we do with our divorcing clients and the benefit of going through this exercise and really establishing what your priorities are, what your goals are through the engagement is twofold. One, it becomes our true north.

Jamie Lima: 37:54

As we're making decisions and just working through negotiations, we can say, okay, well, if you give up this thing, it's going to mess up this priority you have over here. How do you want to handle that? It also, secondarily, allows us to understand what the other side is thinking. We want to know what does the spouse want to do with the kids? Do they want to have 50-50 custody? Do they want to?

Jamie Lima: 38:18

I don't know? Do they want to make sure they're in the best schools or pay for college? What about the house? What about the other assets they have? What about this thing and that thing? And the other reason why the benefit of doing that is that it's a little bit of a game of chess, right? We want to understand what the other side is thinking and what their next move might be. So when it does come down to negotiations and we're working through that we keep that top of mind as well. So it helps us do two things really, and that document is available on our website. People can download it, just if you're starting to think through this process and this is a path you think you're going to be going down. Going through that 15 minute exercise could be incredibly beneficial.

Erin Gray: 39:02

Yeah, it's like I always hear. It's like we don't know what, we don't know, right, Whether it goes to the CPA, it goes to the financial planner going through divorce, Like if you've never done it before, don't even know the questions to ask. I do want to ask one last question.

Jamie Lima: 39:20

Do you find that when you work with clients, are they working with another CDFA or are they working with an attorney? Usually an attorney, usually an attorney. We don't find ourselves up against too many other CDFAs. There are only 3,000 of us in the country and only 30% of CDFAs actually do the work.

Erin Gray: 39:35

So like 900. So there's nine.

Jamie Lima: 39:37

Basically, there's 900 of us across the country that are actually doing this work.

Erin Gray: 39:41

How many divorces happen?

Jamie Lima: 39:42

30 million.

Erin Gray: 39:44

A year. So 10%, right. I mean I don't know what the, I don't know what the population is now in America, but like I heard at one time, it was like 300 million, right, like.

Jamie Lima: 39:53

So 10% what the population is now in America but I heard it one time it was like 300 million, right, so 10% of the population. I was going to go through a first or second divorce in that year.

Erin Gray: 39:59

Wow, that's incredible.

Jamie Lima: 40:02

Yeah.

Erin Gray: 40:02

So is it more so, do you think? Is it more so, like, just more letters behind your name? It's more like a designation thing. If you only have a third practicing, is it a designation thing? I know, I'm not. I know I'm asking you to speculate, like what are these people thinking? But like that to me means like I think, like, oh, they just want more more letters behind their name, but like you're not actually practicing and doing the thing you know.

Jamie Lima: 40:25

I think it's. It's twofold. One, you get into the work and you realize, wow, this is actually really stressful because there's a lot of emotion, it's time consuming because you have to be spot on with the information that you're presenting to the courts and the attorneys. You've got to take a lot of time. So there's that component of it. It's a little bit stressful. And secondly, I think a lot of these CDFA is that our advisors with big name firms like Fidelity Investments, charles Schwab, ubs.

Jamie Lima: 40:56

We went to the IDFA conference, which is our big conference, annual conference, last two weeks ago, and about half the people in the room that were CDFAs did not even do the work because they were there for the education but they couldn't do the work because the companies that they work for wouldn't allow them to do it. Wow, so they wanted the education that way, if they do have clients that are that are going through the process, they can certainly support them and give them, you know, some some solid advice. But they can't. They're not going to be showing up to do expert testimony, they're not mediating cases, they're not doing all the calculations, they don't even have access to the software we have access to, they just have the it's. It's more of a information education situation for them than anything. Yeah.

Erin Gray: 41:36

Yeah, more like. Okay, this is where I know to like and maybe it's a, it's a community right, like they meet people that are actually practicing so they know where to send to, but it's not necessarily a like. Yeah, anything else you want to add before we send off?

Jamie Lima: 41:51

Yeah, no, I think we covered a lot.

Erin Gray: 41:54

There's, like I said, there's there's a bunch of free resources on the website People can can reach out, share that and I'll put it in there, but say that again your website, and then I'll also put all of that in the show notes so that they can go to the website.

Jamie Lima: 42:08

Yeah, it's, it's Allegiant divorce solutions, allegiant dscom. We'll, we'll make sure the link is there and you know, if you're. The last thing I would say is, if you're contemplating it, if you don't know what direction you know, book some time with us. We, the calls are complimentary. Yeah right, there's no requirement. You just have to show up to the appointment. Don't block out time for somebody else that can need it. If you're just going to kick the tires and not take it seriously.

Jamie Lima: 42:31

If you're serious about getting the help from us or someone else and this is something that's on the radar for you that you really want the assistance with, go to the website. Literally on the homepage there is a link to our calendar. You can book a time with myself and, you know, another CDFA on my team If there's, if I'm not available and we'll just walk you through. You know we'll learn more about your situation, get an understanding of where we might be able to support you, answer any questions you have and then send you on your way and hopefully in the right direction. So there's no obligation, there's no costs.

Jamie Lima: 42:58

We're not going to spam you every day and text message every day we don't do that kind of stuff. You'll be on our newsletter. You can unsubscribe if you want to be unsubscribed. It's not a big deal, it won't hurt our feelings. But biggest thing is again, just don't do it if you block the time for somebody else, if you're not going to take it seriously, because we have people kicking the tires every once in a while and it takes away from existing clients and our opportunity to talk to people like you and support folks like you as well. So I'm only one person and our time is limited. So if you're going to do it, make sure you take it seriously.

Erin Gray: 43:32

I love that. Jamie, thank you for sharing all of your knowledge, like I really appreciate it. Such a fun conversation and each of you. Thank you for listening and watching and until next time. One of the things that we forgot to mention while we were recording that I wanted to come back and elaborate on is that Jamie said that most of his cases only take five to 10 hours worth of work. So he does take a retainer of $3,000 upfront, and so I just wanted to put that knowledge in here, because I'm like five to 10 hours, like that's hardly anything. So I just wanted to give that information and then I'm going to put all of his information in the show notes and, as always, thank you for listening, for sharing your time with us, and if you have any questions, you can definitely reach out to Jamie. I'll put all of his information in the show notes.