Divorce Financial Planning
Own Your Fresh Start
Divorce or separation cascades across your personal finances. It affects where you live, how you share child and spousal support, what happens to your RRSPs and pensions, and when you can retire. It can also shape what kind of financial footprint you leave for your family. Our role is to slow things down just enough that you can see the whole picture—today, through the mediation divorce process, and in the years after.
Why Work with a Financial Planner for Divorce?
If you’re going through a divorce or separation, our financial planners help you organize your finances during divorce, understand your options, and build a plan that supports the life you want next.
“Money isn’t about numbers; it’s about achieving your goals. I didn’t think I could buy my ex-husband out of our home, or go back to school, or put my daughter through university, and now I’ve done all three.”
“Money isn’t about numbers; it’s about achieving your goals. I didn’t think I could buy my ex-husband out of our home, or go back to school, or put my daughter through university, and now I’ve done all three.”
Beyond The Settlement
Whether it’s for business succession, blended family dynamics, or philanthropic goals, our advanced financial planning team identifies and implements strategies that complement your life. With our in-house tax lawyer and integrated planning support, you can work with your advisor to craft a tax-efficient, personalized plan.
Professional Coordination
Family law, tax rules, and investment decisions all intersect during divorce. We collaborate with your family law attorney, mediator, and accountant to ensure advice is coordinated, not competing. Each professional oversees a specific aspect of the process, but your plan pulls everything together.
Ongoing Support
The wealth you build is more than just a number. It represents the freedom to uplift your entire family by ensuring they’re taken care of. It can also provide you with the reassurance of knowing you’ll be remembered for making a difference—but it all starts with planning, advisor-facilitated meetings, and a shared goal.
The first step is simple: understand where you stand today. Together, we list what you own and what you owe—bank accounts, investments, retirement savings, property, pensions, and any business interests. We separate personal from marital or common-law property and note which rules vary by province. From there, we build a clear view of your current net worth and cash flow so you can walk into any meeting knowing exactly what’s at stake.
Most settlement offers look reasonable until you see how they play out over time. We model different divorce settlement options: who keeps the home, how pensions and RRSPs are divided, how support payments affect your budget, and what your retirement looks like post-divorce. Seeing these scenarios side by side often changes the conversation. It turns “I think this is fair” into “I know what this means for my financial future.”
Support payments and property division come with tax rules that are easy to overlook. Spousal support is generally taxable for the recipient and deductible for the payer when the CRA’s conditions are met, while child support payments are usually neither taxable nor deductible. RRSPs and some pensions can be transferred between spouses tax-deferred if they are handled correctly in a legal agreement. We work with your advisory team so the financial decisions you make during divorce do not create avoidable tax surprises later.
Once a legal agreement is in place, the focus shifts to your financial plan. We help you set up new accounts, close or separate joint credit accounts, and put a realistic budget in place that reflects any child or spousal support payments. We revisit your investment strategy, review your estate plan, and update beneficiaries and powers of attorney so your documents reflect your new reality. The goal is simple: a clear plan for your financial future post‑divorce, not just a stack of paperwork.
