When you take a good long hard look at your marriage and have come to the conclusion that divorce is in your near term future, this is a great time to be thinking about your financial future and how to protect as much of your finances and assets as possible. You need to be doing this prior to starting divorce proceedings because after you’ve started the process, you may be severely limited as to what you can do financially that would be seen as benefiting you personally.



In talking with your spouse, if it appears that the divorce is going to be a friendly one, also known an uncontested divorce, this may be unnecessary but it is still a good idea. Even the best of friends can part ways in a hurry if there is money at stake.



Sit down with your spouse and determine where you can cut back, starting immediately, so that you can keep more money in your pocket. Perhaps you can just get a Sunday delivery of the newspaper instead of daily. Maybe you can reduce your cable TV bill by removing the premium movie channel option. Depending on how the divorce proceedings work out, you may need the money you are saving here via these reductions.



One thing that many do not think about but which is critical is that you should close all your joint credit cards. If you still need the credit card, then you can contact the credit card issuer and ask them to reissue a card that is just in your name instead of in both of your names. As time goes on, if your spouse gets upset with you, this would prevent them from going on a shopping spree to charge all your credit cards to the hilt, where you would end up being responsible for at least half of the balance due, if not all of it.



You should also close any joint bank accounts that you may have. When you open a new account, do so at a different bank in your area. If you have been with the same bank for a long time, there is a chance that your spouse could withdraw the entire balance of the account just because the teller happens to recognize your spouse by sight. Legally this should not happen but it does happen, so take steps to prevent it.



If you are like most people and your employer has a 401k program or some type of retirement or pension program that you contribute to, contact your employer about temporarily stopping your contributions to that program. Remember, in worst case, your spouse will get half of that, so there is no sense in continuing to put more money into it. You can resume your contributions after your divorce is finalized.



Be smart about your divorce preparation. If you prepare for the worst, then you are ready and hopefully things will not go totally south. Even if it looks like the divorce will be friendly and uncontested, things can change in a heartbeat and there is no reason to leave yourself exposed financially.