It's important in your preparation for a divorce that you know about all financial circumstances of your marriage even though you may not be the one that has regularly invested money or controlled the pension or retirement account or have been responsible for paying off the debts.

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What is involved in the financial preparation for a Florida divorce? This is a very important question, because Florida has a requirement that parties that are going through a divorce, or even in certain child custody cases where there's child support involved, that they exchange essential financial documents as part of the requirements by the court and by the law here in Florida.

It's important in your preparation for a divorce, that you know about all the financial circumstances of your marriage, even though you may not be the one that has regularly invested money, or controlled the pension or retirement account, or been responsible for paying off the debts. You should have a good idea going into the divorce, or family law case, what are your financial circumstances. You should have a list of all the property that the two of you own, or have invested in. It would be a good idea to get a credit report that would show what all the debts of both parties are, all loans, credit cards, mortgages, if there are any tax liens on the property. Obtaining a printout from the clerk of the court regarding the property is always a good idea. Determining what values a house may have is easy, if you contact a realtor and ask a realtor to prepare a comparative market analysis, or CMA, for your house, and that can apply to boats and cars that either party has acquired during the course of the marriage.

There's one simple rule to keep in mind when you're determining the financial preparation in a divorce. Florida really doesn't care who may have property titled in his or her name. The central question is this: Was the property acquired during the course of the marriage? And if so, regardless of how it is titled, it's going to be marital property. If you had separate property, let's just say you had an IRA account that had $100,000 in that account on the date that you were married, and you've been married for 10 years, and that $100,000 grew to $150,000, the growth, that is the $50,000 that that account grew during the course of the marriage is going to be determined to be marital, and that'll be subject to division by the court.