0223: How Much Will Divorce Cost? (Answer: It Can Be Expensive!)

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One of the most common questions I get, and one of the biggest anxiety producing questions I get, is how much is divorce going to cost? How much should I expect to spend on the divorce process? And if you're going to ask your attorney how much divorce is going to cost, they're going to say it depends. And I've never known an attorney to give a straight answer when it comes to the cost of divorce. 

And so in this particular episode, I want to go through some considerations in terms of how much the divorce may end up costing you in terms of the financial check that you might have to write. So I'm going to just give some ranges and some considerations and things to think about as it comes to the divorce process.

Now everyone's situation is different. Divorce can cost more whether you live in a city, versus a suburb, versus a small town. Divorce can cost a lot depending upon what assets you have, what needs to be done. There's a lot of variations, but I'm just going to give you a range. And so on the low end, from what I see per person, I see the minimum, minimum, minimum, most people are going to spend on their divorce is about $5,000. And that's for one person. And so it'd be $10,000 as a couple. And that's assuming that everything goes smoothly in divorce, and yes, there are ways to make divorce go smoothly, but that's your best-case scenario. 

Now, the normal range I see for people is usually in the 20 to I'd say 35 or $40,000 range per person. Sometimes it's closer to 15. Sometimes it's closer to 50, but that unfortunately is not uncommon when it comes to the divorce process. And sometimes if there's just a lot of fighting, a lot of complication, the process is going to drag on for several years, the bills can get into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and I've seen that too.

And so what I want to go through is first to be aware of the cost of the divorce, and if you're going to be going down this path. I mean, that's why you're listening to this episode. There is a big expense, and you have to really think about what's worth it, and what's not when it comes to investing in the divorce process. And I want to go through a few ways in terms of explaining both how you could control the cost of divorce, and also how to figure out just a few quick methods on how to pay for it.

When it comes to minimizing or controlling the cost of divorce, really the biggest expense when it comes to divorce cost is how much you and your spouse disagree on certain items. To put it a different way, is if you and your spouse can come up with solutions on your own, and come up with as much of an agreement as you can between the two of you and not involve attorneys, the cheaper the divorce will be, the less expensive it will be. 

And so if everything is a fight, and I use an extreme example all the time, is I grew up with a middle-class family. They did well for themselves, saved, and they had several hundred thousand dollars of savings, and a house and the normal stuff. And they spent 100% of their money and then some fighting over everything, from not just the big items like houses and retirement accounts, but all the way to who gets the dining room set. And unfortunately, they ended up in the divorce process, they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees, and that was all the money that they had.

On other examples, I know billionaires who've gotten divorced for less than $20,000,