What is a CDFA®?
A CDFA®, or Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, is a highly skilled financial professional that specializes in divorce financial planning and analysis. The role of the CDFA® is to work with you to understand the financial impacts of decisions made today on your future financial well-being. A CDFA® will work in conjunction with your divorce team, including your lawyers and/or mediators, to ensure that your marriage settlement represents the best financial outcome for you not only in the short-term, but more importantly in the long-term.
Here are the top 5 reasons working with a CDFA® will benefit you:
- In depth financial analysis at the beginning of the divorce process will save you time.
The average length of a divorce that goes in trial in the U.S. is 18 months. During that time, both parties spend a significant amount of time organizing their finances and trying to gain an understanding of how they will be affected by their impending separation. A CDFA® is trained to help clients understand their finances, the divorce process and implications of decisions, resulting in significant time savings.
- The expertise of a CDFA® professional will save you money.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a more transparent view of your financial future? When you work with a CDFA®, you will get just that. This will help you better reach a legal settlement that addresses YOUR financial needs. When the lawyers go back and forth working on the settlement, the outcome can often be detrimental to one party, extremely expensive and time consuming. A CDFA® professional can work with you to obtain a thorough understanding of the process and empower you to reach a fair settlement during this difficult and often financially disruptive time.
- Working with a CDFA® professional can make sure you avoid any negative long-term financial impacts of a settlement before you sign an agreement.
As an integral part of the team, the CDFA® can work with you to fully understand the long-term effects of the settlement. Rather than just looking at the short-term benefits, the CDFA® will look at the long-term effects including tax liabilities, retirement implications and other long-term financial considerations.
- A CDFA® can help you establish a realistic budget and that can help relieve stress in your post-divorce life.
While there’s a great sense of relief when a marriage settlement is finally agreed upon, quite often post-divorce budgeting is not considered. A CDFA® professional can help you think about and plan for your finances post-divorce and help you establish a realistic budget moving forward.
- A CDFA® professional can help you understand the divorce process and eliminate any undue stress caused by misinformation and misunderstanding.
In many aspects of our lives, we are bombarded with a lot of misinformation. The subject of divorce is not immune to this. When we are provided with misinformation, we develop misconceptions about the process, and this can be detrimental to the outcome. When you engage and work with a CDFA®, the analysis they do will help make sure you make sound decisions that will lead to a settlement that provides a stable financial and economic future for you and your family.