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.

Not only will going through divorce proceedings be very hard on you emotionally and physically but it may prove very costly as well. A great many people when going through a divorce are too concerned with the emotional effect it is having on their life that they don’t realize it is placing a strain on their financial situation as well. In this article we offer some divorce tips for men for protecting your finances during divorce proceedings that could prove useful.



1. Outstanding Debts – Any of these which are in joint names you should arrange to pay off immediately and get them cleared. If however you are not able to pay such debts off straightaway then ask the lender to freeze them until everything has been finalized or when you have funds. Doing this will prevent any further debt being run up on them by either you or your soon to be ex.



2. Joint Credit Cards – To ensure that your credit rating isn’t to adversely affected at this time immediately cancel those that in both you and your partners names. If you leave them as they the chances of your partner running up debts on them is greatly increased, especially in those situations where the split is less than acrimonious.



3. Family Home – If neither of you will be staying in the home that you shared together it is important that you sell it as soon as possible. However, if there are children involved then the situation may be that your partner remains in it with them, but you need to get her to be the one that takes over paying the mortgage until such time as the children leave home. But be aware that the courts may determine that you need to contribute to this as well as part of the payments relating to your children.