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Update These Documents after Divorce

March 11, 2013 in Financial Divorce, Functional Divorce, Legal Divorce | Permalink

paperwork

When you get divorced there are all kinds of paperwork and documentation you need to update, change, create and just be able to put your hands on at a moment’s notice.  It can feel overwhelming to have to deal with all of this on top of the emotional turmoil of divorce.

To help make things a bit easier on you, here’s a table with the most common documents you’ll want to make sure you’ve appropriately dealt as you complete your divorce.

Document Name

Purpose of Document*

Changes to Consider**
Social Security Card Personal identifier for individuals in the United States If part of your divorce decree included a change to your name, you’ll want to file that change with the Social Security Administration and receive a new Social Security Card.
Driver’s License Grants a person the right to legally drive.  It’s also commonly used as picture identification. If part of your divorce decree included a change to your name, you’ll want to file that change with your state’s Driver’s Licensing office and receive a new Driver’s License.
Property Titles (for real estate, motor vehicles, etc.) Used to identify ownership of property Transferred ownership and any name changes
Retirement Plans (e.g., 401K, IRA, pension plan, etc.) Monies that are set aside for an individual’s retirement and can be released to a beneficiary upon the death of the individual Make sure your beneficiaries are updated to reflect your new marital status.
Life Insurance Policy Provide for your family after your death, pay for your funeral costs Make sure your beneficiaries are updated to reflect your new marital status
Will & Trust Can identify the persons or entities that will receive your property when you die, for you to appoint a guardian for your minor children, appoint those you wish to manage your estate, revoke or alter a previous will Make sure your beneficiaries are updated to reflect your new marital status
W-4 Helps your employer to withhold the correct federal income tax from your pay Make sure to adjust your number of dependents to reflect your newly single status
Medical Treatment Authorization and Consent Form Used for those situations where minors are unaccompanied by either parents or legal guardians.  Because your children may be in different care situations than when you were married, you might want to make sure whomever is watching your children has the ability to help your children get appropriate medical care.
Medical Power of Attorney Designates a person that you trust to make health care decisions on your behalf should you be unable to make those decisions. You’ll probably want to make sure you update who this person is.
Directive to Physicians and Family or Surrogates Designed to help you communicate your wishes about medical treatment if you are no longer to make decisions due to illness or incapacity. You’ll probably want to make sure to update who this person is.
HIPPA Authorizations at each of your doctors Allows you to indicate who besides you may have access to your medical information. If you had originally filled out forms at a doctor’s office allowing information to be left with your spouse, you might want to change this.

 

*  The purposes identified in this table are just casual descriptions.  For legal descriptions, you’ll want to contact the appropriate authority.

**  The changes to consider are just suggestions.  You’ll want to work with the appropriate authority to verify which changes are appropriate for you.

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

Which of the documents above do you currently have?  For each of the documents listed in the table that you’ve already got, take the time to review and update them.

Which of the documents do you not have? For each of the documents that you do not have, look at the purpose of the document and determine whether or not you want to have it.  If you want to have the document, make an appointment with the appropriate professional to have the document created.

Where are your documents? There are some documents that you’ll want to keep handy.  You’ll want to make sure that the appropriate family members know where you documents are kept.  You’ll probably also want to make copies of the documents for yourself and family members in case getting to the originals may not be speedy enough.

There are other documents, like the HIPPA Authorizations at each of your doctor’s offices that they’ll keep the originals of and that you’ll just have copies of.  You’ll want to keep tabs on these as well in case you need to update the information on them in the future.

© 2013 Karen Finn.  All rights reserved under all copyright conventions.

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Flexibility: It’s About More Than Just Muscles

December 17, 2012 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce | Permalink

Life changes a lot when you separate and divorce. Things that used to be a regular part of life just aren’t anymore. And when things change in unexpected ways, we can get scared, frustrated and angry.

When clients begin working with me, they’re usually experiencing some combination of fear, frustration and anger. One of the first things we do is dive into what’s behind or at the root of these emotions. What we usually discover on our deep dive are limits that have been disregarded in some way. The limits could be behaviors, expectations, thoughts, beliefs or even habits.

The identification of your personal limits is a critical part of restructuring your life during and after divorce.

Some people are quite adept at identifying their limits – what they can and can’t do, what they think and why they think it, what they expect and why they expect it and what their habits of thought, belief, response and action are.

Others aren’t as aware of their limits. They aren’t quite sure of what their limits are or even if they want to know because they do and think what others tell them to.

And then there are people everywhere in between these two extremes.

Regardless of your starting point, I think knowing and understanding your limits is one of the key pieces to successfully navigating divorce. Your limits can help you understand what’s truly important to you as you negotiate your settlement. And knowing your limits will even allow you to ask for help and support when you need it.

Your limits will be tested, pushed, prodded, and beat against before, during, and after your separation and divorce. Who’s doing all this “exploring”? EVERYONE. Or at least it will probably feel that way. However, the chief “explorers” are usually your soon-to-be-ex and you. I’ll bet you already get how your soon-to-be-ex figures in here, but did you expect to also be one the chief “explorers”? The thing is that by virtue of going through the divorce process you’re asking yourself to completely redefine what your life is like. And anytime you or anyone else changes it’s a matter of testing and exploring previous limits.

I know all the testing, pushing, prodding, and beating against limits is at a minimum uncomfortable and at worst excruciating. However, the payoff is either an adjustment or a reaffirming of your limits along with, ideally, improved ways of communicating them to yourself and others. With your new limits you’re most often better off than you were with your old limits. Kinda like that old adage – what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

Great, right? There’s going to be some struggle and then things will be better. UGH! There’s nothing there about how to make the transition from married to divorce easier! And here’s where I’m going to tell you that the way to make things easier is to be flexible and loving while you’re exploring your limits so you can adjust and evaluate them by choice instead of by force.

By allowing yourself to be flexible as you explore your limits you’ll be much more able to understand and choose what to do with your limits and your life as you move forward through your divorce process. The flexibility will also allow you to negotiate from a more confident spot because you’ll be able to more easily see the options available to you. Developing the ability to be flexible will help you now as you’re navigating your divorce, but throughout your life.

 

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

Know your limits. As you’re proceeding through your separation and divorce process take note of your limits. You’ll probably become aware of them most easily when you’re experiencing a strong emotion.

Explore your limits. Once you’ve identified a limit, ask yourself questions like “How did I develop this limit?”, “What’s the benefit of this limit?”, and “What might adjusting this limit be like?” Take note of what you discover about yourself.

Adjust your limits. Exploring limits almost always gives you new ideas of how to be, act, and think. Take advantage of your discoveries and adjust your limits in ways that make you feel wonderful!

As always, I’m here if you need some help in increasing your flexibility.   You can reach my by email at karen@functionaldivorce.com and by phone at 817-993-0561.

© 2012 Karen Finn.  All rights reserved under all copyright conventions.

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My Beliefs Get in the Way

November 26, 2012 in Emotional Divorce, Functional Divorce | Permalink

One of the ways I market my business is to attend networking events.  In early spring 2011, I attended an event where the featured speaker was a woman named Cricket Lee.  Cricket spoke about how she had spent years researching and testing to perfect pant fit for women.  She had a great story about her work and I chose to support her by ordering a pair of pants.

Now I’ll bet that just about every woman reading this has a belief similar to mine when I ordered the pants.  My belief was that there’s no way that Cricket has really standardized fits in a way that would work for me.  Finding pants that fit is almost impossible.

It took a bit longer than anticipated for the pants to arrive – a little more than a year, but I was completely OK with that because I knew that Cricket was attempting something BIG and besides the pants weren’t going to fit me any way.

When the pants did show up, I didn’t even open them.  I had a broken ankle at the time and couldn’t put them on any way.  And there was no way they were going to fit, so what did it really matter?

I left those pants in the box for months!  It was only after running into Cricket again at an event in early October that I decided I might as well face my disappointment and try on the pants.  Well, I put it off for a few more weeks and didn’t try them on until the beginning of November – before I would run into Cricket again and need to tell her they didn’t fit.

You know what?  My belief was completely WRONG!  The pants fit perfectly right out of the box.  Despite being wrinkled after sitting in the box for many months, they looked amazing.  After getting over my thrill about how great they fit and felt, I realized that my belief about what was going to happen had gotten in the way of me enjoying my new pants.  Pretty ridiculous, right?

Well, here’s the thing, in my work with people navigating the chaos and confusion of divorce, I see beliefs getting in the way all the time.  I see people who believe they deserve to hurt because they’re getting divorce and refuse to do what will help them to feel better.  I hear stories of people who believe they aren’t worthy of being loved because they’re getting divorced.  I hurt when people tell me they believe they don’t like themselves and are depressed because of their divorce.

Beliefs are personal and no one can make you believe anything you don’t want to and that’s the saddest thing of all.  On some level, everyone who tells me they deserve to hurt or that they’re not worth loving or that they are depressed and don’t like themselves wants to believe these things.

Beliefs like these get in the way of living a great life and in a way are just as ridiculous as my belief that putting on a pair of pants would be a waste of time because they’d never fit me since I was different.

Beliefs can get in the way of healing from divorce and moving on with your life.  Being willing and able to change the beliefs that get in your way is one of the key requirements to living a great life during and after your divorce.  Your Functional Divorce Assignment will give you some ideas for how you might discard one or more of the beliefs that are keeping you from having the happiness and confidence I know could be yours.

 

Your Functional Divorce Assignment:

 

Identify a belief about yourself that brings you discomfort or pain. Maybe you are feeling depressed.  If you are, dig down into what you are thinking when you feel the most depressed and you’ll likely uncover a belief.  Or maybe you’re experiencing a different unhappy emotion.  If you dig down into your thoughts when you’re experiencing it you’ll likely uncover a belief.

Is this belief appropriate?  The beliefs that cause us discomfort or pain need to be examined regularly.  It’s possible that the belief you uncovered in the previous step isn’t serving you anymore.  If that’s the case, either that belief needs to be changed or your behavior needs to be changed to align with your belief.

Don’t worry if this is hard to do on your own, you can always ask for help.  For most people it is pretty difficult to identify the beliefs that get in their way.  If you’re having a hard time, relax.  The easiest way to get help working on identifying the beliefs that are getting in your way is to schedule a Complimentary Consultation with me to discuss your situation.  You can reach me by email at karen@functionaldivorce.com or by phone at 817-993-0561.

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Finding Your True Power

June 1, 2012 in Functional Divorce | Permalink

Man Performing Yoga by Lake

I love the Beatles. OK, it’s more accurate to say I love the Beatles album 1. I consider it “happy music” and often put it on when I’ve got a long drive ahead of me or when I just need a pick-me-up. One of the songs on the album is Help!

If you’re not familiar with the lyrics of the song, you can find them on Metro Lyric’s website. For me, the idea behind the song is that we learn how to be independent when we’re young and as we grow and mature we yearn and search for interdependence.

When we’re born we’re completely dependent on others and essentially helpless. All we can do is cry and scream when we want help. Then, when we turn about 2 we begin to discover our own power and the magic word “NO!”. That’s when our natural desire is to begin to find out who we are independent of our parents. Most of us tend to begin intently striving for our independence during our teen years. Some of us wait until we get to college to become independent and some, like me, don’t realize our full independence until much later. Regardless of when you establish your independence, it’s an important milestone and the ability to exclaim “I did it!” is one of the headiest moments anyone can experience.

And yet, after we’ve achieved independence and it’s glories, there’s often the desire for connection with others. I’m not talking about a temporary connection, but a deep meaningful connection that helps us to know that we’re not alone in our life. This is the search for interdependence and where we recognize our true power – our ability to be part of something so much larger than us that nurtures and supports us and everyone else in ways beyond what we could ever do on our own.

The key to this power, our true power, is the ability to be vulnerable and ask for help when we need it. This is different that asking for help simply because you want something that you’re unwilling to do for yourself. This is about asking for help because you’ve been working toward and straining for something and you realize you’re just not able to do it all on your own, you need the help of someone to take the next step, to ease some of the burden, to be connected with all that you can be and all that is. This is the type of asking that true interdependence demands. I believe this is true maturity. I also believe this interdependence creates a joy and meaning in life that is beyond compare.

My thought is that we all live lives that are combination of dependent and interdependent thoughts, habits, beliefs and actions. I think of the path between dependent, independent and interdependent being a continuum. Probably the easiest way to visualize it is as a line with dependent at the far left, independent someplace in the middle and interdependent is at the far right.

I’ve yet to meet someone who is living completely interdependent life. Of course, there are lots of people I’ve not met yet.

Your Friendly Coaching Assignment:

Where are you on the continuum of living a dependent, an independent and an interdependent life? What I find is that the answer depends on which part of my life I’m thinking about. You may find the same is true for your too. If that’s the case, answer the question for each part of your life. I’m sure your answer(s) will be interesting.

Are there parts of your life that you’d like to move more toward independent or interdependent? This can be a tough question to answer for a lot of people because we aren’t really sure if such a change is possible or we might be plain afraid of the consequences of such a change.

If you answered “no” to the last question, good for you! Chances are great that you’re comfortable with your life exactly as it is now. That’s a wonderful thing!

I f you answered “yes” to the last question, get ready for an adventure!Figuring out how to realize more of your own power is the greatest adventure anyone can take. You’ll discover so much about yourself that you’ll be in awe of whom you truly are and who those around you are. That’s been true for me anyway. I also know that it’s not always the easiest adventure to undertake and yet every time I move from dependence to independence and then to interdependence I am ALWAYS happy I have.

Happy adventuring!

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