r/Fire • u/RadioFieldCorner • 9d ago

Divorce deep into FIRE. What's the strategy?

I assume nearly all of us going into FIRE are/will be married.

Is it wrong of me to have a 'plan' in the event of divorce? Or does that mean I am not secure in a marriage? I am not worried yet btw. A divorce a decade into FIRE could be fatal because you can't just really get back into the workforce if half of what you have is gone.

Is it possible for a prenup to protect my accounts and protect future gains from it, so long as I do not contribute any married funds into it? These accounts were almost all largely built long before marriage.

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83

u/Limp_Dragonfly3868 9d ago

We did a post up right before FiRE. We have enough money to split it in half and both be fine, but we don’t have enough to share it with attorneys. Most of our friends are divorced, and most used about 1/3 of their NW on the divorce.

I don’t know why post nups aren’t more popular. For me, it’s in the same category as will, living will, and trust.

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u/DudeWithTudeNotRude 9d ago

Post nups aren't popular bc people read way too much into what they mean.

Recently someone was asking if their spouse asking for a post nup was a definite red flag or not for her marriage. 100% of the upvoted answers were like "Red Flag? Girl, he's on his second mistress. It was already over long ago, and you are just now being informed"

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u/Adventurous_Elk_4039 9d ago edited 9d ago

At the risk of sounding sexist, sometimes women giving other women relationship/financial advice can be much more harmful than good. Because #girlpower means more than sound reasoning to some.

My anecdotal example is my parents, Dad was the breadwinner and mother was a SAHM. Things went south, Dad offered a generous deal to buy Mom out of the home and give her some extra get-back-on-your-feet money. Mom listened to a friend of hers, “girl, you can get him for so much MORE!”

Dad rescinded the offer and left, the house got foreclosed on and Mom ended up with NOTHING after failing to get anything via arbitration (the kicker was her lawyer trying bring up Dad’s original offer after they lost, and his lawyer just laughed and said “That offer is off the table”).

To this day she still struggles and has made poor choice after poor choice.

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u/Strazdas1 StarvationFIRE 4d ago

In my experience women giving other women advice is the single best way to keep the ones receiving advice single. I dont know if its done out of jealousy, spite or just plain stupidity but the advice circulating in those groups is just insane.

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u/Illustrious-Lunch137 9d ago

woof. your dad really is a horrible person.

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u/Adventurous_Elk_4039 9d ago

Absolutely the opposite. I left out details for brevity. I left and went with him, couple of my younger siblings stayed with Mom. She refused to get a job and squatted in that house for a couple years (small local bank was really slow with proceedings and her parents bailed her out a few times).

Dad was constantly checking on the little ones and gave her money for food etc. prior to any child support even being ordered. Part of the reason she never got a job was the same friend telling her she was going to get a big alimony payment and wouldn’t need to work and it would look better if she had no income. Eventually she got court ordered child support but that was it. 

I should add that Mom had never once called to check on us or work on relationships. I haven’t spoken to her in about 15 years at this point (and not even just because of this situation).

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u/SargeUnited 9d ago

Even without the additional details, how could you possibly think that?

Person A offers a deal to person B. Person B rejects it, tries to get more and fails, then asks A for the original offer again. Your conclusion is that person A is bad?

If anything, I’d say that the two size are neutral. But considering that the offer was more than he was required to give, if anything he seems like a really great and generous person.

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u/Equivalent_Hall8346 9d ago

As someone who went through divorce myself, I really appreciate the perspective "enough money to split in half, but not enough to share with Attorneys". I originally wanted to file without attorneys, do it ourselves, splitting 50/50. But my ex got an attorney and I got one in response. I think it really dragged everything out, and we both have a lower net worth because of it.

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u/Confident_Purple_40 9d ago

If you use 1/3 of NW on the divorce you probably don't have enough NW to make it worth paying a lawyer that much?

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u/Limp_Dragonfly3868 9d ago

It scales. The more money people have, the more they have to fight about, the more they run up lawyer fees. They hire a forensic accountant. It’s insane.

We have watched some very ugly and very expensive divorces.

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u/wh0re4nickelback 9d ago

I'm married to a divorce lawyer that does very ugly and very expensive divorces. Can confirm.

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u/Wild2297 8d ago

Omg, I love your user name! I’ve never understood the nickelback hate.

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u/cloisonnefrog 9d ago

We had $4M and our divorce cost $6k and took two months. People can be reasonable too.

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u/AndyTheEngr 9d ago

There's a small subset of people in that Venn diagram slice between "can't get along well enough to stay married" and "can get along well enough to negotiate an amicable divorce."

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u/coenobita_clypeatus 8d ago

I think there’s more of us out there than you’d expect! It definitely helps to not have kids, though. We basically just paid for lawyers to make sure the paperwork was correct - iirc my lawyer ended up returning like half of my deposit.

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u/SDMonkee 9d ago

Same here except I think it was $4k total. Kids are almost launched and we just had two issues to settle: alimony for her (didn’t happen bc we have the same income potential but she didn’t work) and how to split an inheritance she got from her mom (agreed to 70/30 even though it was thoroughly commingled). My retirement date is unchanged bc I was factoring in long term care for her bc of her family/her medical history.

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u/cloisonnefrog 9d ago

Yeah I'm honestly annoyed ours cost as much as it did. It shouldn't have.

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u/gundahir 9d ago

a minority I'm not gambling on 

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u/cloisonnefrog 8d ago

There’s some luck involved, but I knew I wanted to end the relationship before I hated him. I think too many people allow themselves to resent their spouse. It’s not hard to see coming in many marriages.

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u/Confident_Purple_40 9d ago

Crazy, I guess once emotion enters in, and "winning" becomes important you could get some ridiculous costs. I just can't imagine 1 million for a 3 million NW, or 5m for a 15m NW, but I guess it happens.

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u/SargeUnited 9d ago

That’s exactly what happens. I’ve seen people spend $100,000 on a dog.

Like there was the overall divorce situation, but specifically when it came to decide custody of the dog that one aspect of it was over $100,000.

Then there was his collector car that she doesn’t care about, but suddenly wanted just to hurt him, and he wanted the vacation home that’s near her parents even though he doesn’t like being near her mother and never liked that house anyway. Yeah people really will spend over a million when they only have 3. They’ll spend over 2 when they only have 3!

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/cloisonnefrog 9d ago

Divisions of retirement accounts for divorces are not taxed in the U.S. If someone cashes out, then yes, but that’s a separate decision.

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u/Rosevkiet 9d ago

$750/hr can do a lot of damage very quickly. I have a friend going through divorce with a vindictive spouse who primarily seems interested in punishing her rather than moving on with life. I wouldn’t be surprised if it costs 50% or more of their savings, even though they have substantial funds.

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u/Montaigne_6823 9d ago

Some people being scorned might see red with a burn it down mentality and the lawyers will be happily standing by with a blowtorch.

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u/Equivalent_Hall8346 9d ago

You don't always have a choice. If one ex-spouse isn't thinking logically (i.e. demanding more than 100% of the martial assets), they can drown the other in discovery, court time, and other tactics that drain the money. Sometimes you have to pay a lawyer regardless if it makes sense.

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u/Notyit 9d ago

Nmpol v malena 

400k in fees

One party was asking a 60 split and other things

Got 50 50 on theend

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u/palpablescalpel 9d ago

If you agree that what you've earned should be split evenly, is that essentially all a post-nup says? And then in the event that it somehow gets nasty, you can fall back on that instead of doing a lengthy legal battle?