Love and Money Podcast

Erin Levine is on a mission to help separating couples empower a better life ahead. She is an experienced lawyer turned founder of Hello Divorce, a venture capital backed online platform that combines easy-to-use digital tools with expert help to make divorce easier and kinder. In this episode, we talk about the advantages of managing your divorce process yourself: from saving a ton of money to ha...

Leah Marie Mazur is a certified Divorce Recovery Coach and founder of Mindfully Ready. She specializes in helping women find inner-peace, happiness, and self-love after divorce. She also provides a safe, judgment-free community for women rebuilding after divorce in her private Facebook group Divorced & Empowered.   Today we're talking about finding support during and after divorce. Support groups...

Episode 26: In the final episode of Season 1, Tracy Coenen talks with Chuck Jaffe about moving past divorce to future relationships , and not repeating past mistakes using estate planning, trusts and more to make sure that children, heirs and future generations get their just due, and that blended families -- and blended finances -- result in happy financial endings, no matter what happens to the...

Episode 25: While it is possible to end a marriage without attorneys -- both in mediation or in court -- finding the money and navigating the minefield of breaking up joint financial lives often requires legal help. In this episode, Tracy talks about the process of hiring a lawyer , figuring out who can help you and what you should be asking to make sure that you have an advocate for yourself and...

Episode 24: Signing the divorce decree doesn't mean all financial bonds have been broken. Tracy says that it's imperative to make a clean break on joint accounts, update beneficiary designations on retirement accounts, insurance policies and more, to get new health-care proxies and to update wills so that a former spouse isn't left in charge legally of key personal matters, and to make sure that y...

Episode 23: There are tons of financial documents you might need during your divorce. How do you know what may help you? Tracy talks about some of the most important ones beyond your bank statements.... like: insurance documents, car titles, estate-planning paperwork, account information related to the children's accounts and more. These should be reviewed to make sure that no assets or accounts a...

Episode 22: While the biggest price most couples pay for partners having affairs is emotional, Tracy discusses the costs of romantic infidelity and the telltale signs and spending patterns it creates. The money lost to financial infidelity typically is gone. How do you get it back? Tracy talks about how you can get proof of what was spent, and potentially recover the money in your  divorce propert...

Episode 21: The risk of financial difficulty in a 'gray divorce' are higher than when couples split up earlier in life; with nearly 25 percent of all divorces happening at age 50 and above -- and roughly 10 percent of the 700,000 annual divorce cases in the United States involving couples who are 65 and older -- a growing number of people nearing retirement are having to unravel long-term finances...

Episode 20: Continuing with the discussion of how merging finances sets the tone for the relationship, Tracy examines the importance of coming up with a spending plan and not making it feel like a restrictive, uncomfortable diet. Tracy says your plan needs to cover six areas of family expenses and spending -- and urges deciding how to consider where money can be saved or needs to set aside -- but...

Episode 19: With money squabbles being a central issue in many divorce cases, Tracy looks at what couples can do as they merge finances and marry that will set the baseline for expectations each partner has around money. Setting boundaries quells many disagreements before they occur , but with two independent people coming together there is no one right system that works for everyone. Tracy discus...

Episode 18: Tracy dives into the headlines about Real Housewives Kim Zolciak and Kyle Richards -- both going through messy divorces -- to note that pre-nuptual agreements are crucial in protecting both sides of a couple in the event of a split. She notes that trusts, post-nups and even "re-nups" help to ensure that couples get what they want and expect in terms of both assets and debts , and encou...

Episode 17: Tracy discusses survey research showing the financial struggle that many women -- particularly divorced women -- have when it comes to amassing sufficient retirement savings. Between time off and/or altering career trajectories to raise families, women often amass less money, and then don't fight for their share of the retirement savings in divorce , often preferring to get the house,...

Episode 16: For all of the efforts to uncover hidden money and fraud in a relationship that is breaking up, not every amount that's discovered can actually be captured and recovered. This week, Tracy talks about the importance of rooting out the details of where money was spent, mis-spent or frittered away , even when the cash can't necessarily be returned directly, noting that other marital asset...

Episode 15: When the divorce process starts, spouses need to play out their suspicions, if any, about their ex's bad actions. Spouses who want to protect themselves need to dig into three big areas where trouble typically is found. She discusses secretive behaviors, a spouse who has taken on additional control over family finances or transactions that are often hidden in plain sight -- using cash...

Episode 14: Many spouses trust their partner when it comes to filing taxes, and sign the annual documents without always realizing what's in there. Once the marriage is being dissolved, however, what's in the tax return -- or missing from it -- can have real consequences in properly settling the finances during a split. Today, Tracy tells you what to look for and at in the family tax documents , a...

Episode 13: There are about a dozen ways in which spouses typically hide their financial moves -- and these menthods are not particuarly hard to uncover. Anyone suspecting an ex of moving money will find most of those bad moves in tax documents, bank statements, and credit card records. This week, Tracy talks about what to look for, and how easy or hard it can be to find.

Episode 12: You don't need your ex's cooperation -- or even help from their accountant or tax preparer -- to get tax documents that will help identify the family's money flow, but you will need to go through a process to get those papers . This week, Tracy discusses how to get the tax paperwork, but also follows up on advice from he r  Divorce Money Guide on spotting troublesome transactions in co...

Episode 11: The process of rooting through financial statements and mountains of individual transactions seems gargantuan, but Tracy says that partners who are hiding or redirecting money leave behind telltale clues and signs that often can only be found in all of that data. This week, Tracy discusses how her Divorce Money Guide can be the resource for rooting out the problems and finding the clue...

Episode 10: While many divorce finance stories focus on men hiding money, Tracy says this week that gender doesn't have as much to do with financial infidelity as it does with control. Most couples have one partner in charge of paying the bills and managing the account statements, and this has the potential to create a power imbalance. That disproportionate control can lead to other relationship i...

Episode 9: Thinking that your partner or ex is hiding money may be the start of a high-stakes game, but you need to know where to go seeking in order to see if your suspicions will pay off. This week, Tracy  discusses using credit reports, bank statements and other account paperwork to separate out the habits and routines from the red flags, new trends, changes and telltale signs of trouble. Not e...

Episode 8: Finding the money is the second action in a game of financial hide-and-seek . This week, Tracy discusses how many people in the times leading up to a divorce -- at a point when they think the relationship is headed for a split -- start doing "divorce financial planning," hiding money and financial actions in order to protect their assets and cash-flow while minimizing what their spouse...

Episode 7: There's a fine line that separates normal financial behaviors from bad ones, and Tracy discusses how little white lies and power disparities within a couple -- along with the desire from one or both partners to maintain or improve their control over spending decisions and family money -- can lead people to cross that line , straying into financial infidelities that can mushroom quickly...

Episode 6: Knowing that there has been financial infidelity and proving it can be two different things. Armed with the financial documents, it's time to lay out what happened to the money and to prove the case . Tracy discusses putting it all together and not only to determine what can be recovered but to decide if there needs to be an 'unequal division of assets,' where distributions in a way tha...

Episode 5: Tracy  discusses how the spouse who is typically in charge of the household money generally doesn't cover up their actions, which means that statements from banks, credit cards and investment accounts are the paper trail to follow to find problem expenses . While not every case of mis-spending can be recovered, knowing where the money has gone is important, and Tracy stresses that it's...

Episode 4: Tracy discusses how 'fair and honest' disclosure can't be taken for granted in many divorce cases, and how spouses need to look for red flags like behavior changes, reduced access to some accounts, violating family spending agreements and more searching for emerging patterns. Once red flags are spotted, Tracy says it's back to basics, like checking credit reports, bank statements and mo...