How do I build a first budget map with a client who is newly divorced?

You build it backward from the decree, not forward from her spending. A newly divorced client does not yet have a stable spending history to average, because the last twelve months were legal fees, a move, duplicated household costs and whatever she charged to get through it. What she does have is a signed document that fixes several of her largest numbers for years. Start there.

The first ninety minutes should produce four things: a list of decree driven obligations with dates, a clean inventory of accounts and whose name is on each, a spending baseline built from three months of statements with one time items stripped out, and one ninety day milestone she can actually hit. Nothing about long term goals in session one. She is not ready and the numbers are not stable.

Here is the sequence, including the document request that has to go out before you meet, and the points where the right move is to stop and send her to her attorney.

Documents to request before the session

Send this list at least a week ahead, with a note that partial is fine and that gaps are information too. Ask for PDFs, not screenshots, and ask her to name files with the institution and the month.

• The final judgment of divorce or dissolution decree, plus any marital settlement agreement incorporated into it.
• Any QDRO or retirement division order, whether or not it has been entered yet.
• Three months of statements for every checking, savings and credit card account, including ones she considers his.
• Her two most recent pay stubs, and the most recent notice of any support payment received or paid.
• The mortgage statement and the homeowners policy declarations page, or the lease.
• Auto loan or lease statements and the auto policy declarations page.
• Health insurance enrollment confirmation or the COBRA election notice, with its deadline.
• Last filed federal tax return, and last year's W-2 or 1099s.
• Retirement and brokerage statements, most recent quarter, for accounts in her name.

Expect roughly half of this. Note what is missing on a running open items list rather than chasing it in session. Chasing burns the ninety minutes you have.

Keep reading: Should I get the AFC or the FFC credential before I take on paying clients?

Reading the decree for support, insurance and debt obligations

Read the decree with a highlighter and pull every number that has a date attached to it. You are not interpreting the law. You are extracting cash flow facts.

What to pull, line by line

• Spousal support: monthly amount, start date, end date or step downs, and whether it terminates on remarriage or a defined event. Note the payment method, since bank transfers show up differently than checks.
• Child support: amount, and the age or event that ends it per child. Also pull any add on split for uncovered medical, childcare, or activities, usually expressed as a percentage.
• Health insurance: who carries whom, who pays the premium, and whether she is on COBRA with a fixed end date. COBRA has an election window and a coverage limit, and both need calendar entries.
• Life insurance: many decrees require the support payer to keep a policy naming her as beneficiary. Note the required face amount and the proof of coverage obligation, because nobody follows up on this.
• Property and debt: who is responsible for each debt, and the deadlines for refinancing, transferring title, or selling the home.
• Equalization payments: a lump sum owed either direction, with its due date.
• Retirement division: which accounts split, in what proportion, and whether an order has been entered.

One tax note worth flagging out loud: for divorce instruments executed after 2018, spousal support is not deductible by the payer and not includible in the recipient's income under federal law. That changes what she should be withholding. It is a fact you can state; the return itself belongs to a CPA.

Separating joint accounts and autopay without breaking bills

The failure mode here is dramatic and common. She closes the joint checking account on a Tuesday, and on Thursday the mortgage autopay, two insurance premiums and the utility drafts all fail. Late fees, a policy lapse notice, and a credit ding.

Sequence it instead:

1. Open her sole account first and get direct deposit landing in it. Do not close anything yet.
2. Build the autopay inventory. Go through three months of joint statements line by line and list every recurring debit with its date, amount and the account it hits. Include annual charges, which is why three months is a minimum and twelve is better if she has them.
3. Move autopays one at a time to the new account, oldest date first, and confirm each one posts successfully before moving the next.
4. Leave a float in the joint account for one full billing cycle after the last move, to catch what the inventory missed.
5. Close the joint account only after a clean cycle with no activity, and get written confirmation of closure.
6. Handle joint credit cards separately. She should pull her own credit report to see which cards still list her as an authorized user or joint obligor, then remove herself where the decree allows.

A joint debt assigned to him in the decree is still her debt to the lender. The decree binds the two of them, not the bank. Say that plainly in session one, because it changes how urgently she pushes for refinancing.

Keep reading: What are the mistakes that make a client quit financial coaching before month three?

Building a spending baseline from three months of statements

Total the outflows for each of the last three months, then remove the noise. Divorce months are full of one time spending that will never repeat.

Work an example. Say her three month outflows are $6,900, $8,400 and $6,300, a total of $21,600. Strip the one time items: $2,400 in attorney fees, $1,800 for the move, $900 for a security deposit and $500 for replacing furniture. That is $5,600 removed, leaving $16,000 over three months, or about $5,333 a month of recurring spend. These are assumptions for illustration, and the point is the method.

Now add what the old statements do not yet show. If she is going onto COBRA at $640 a month and the old statements show a $0 payroll premium, that is a new $640 line. Same for a new renters policy, a new phone plan off the family account, or childcare she did not previously pay. A baseline that ignores new costs is a baseline that fails in week six.

Compare the adjusted baseline against confirmed income: net pay plus support actually received, not support ordered. If ordered support has not arrived yet, model on net pay alone and treat support as upside until two consecutive payments land.

Naming fixed, committed and flexible categories

Three buckets, not fifteen. The distinction she needs is not grocery versus dining, it is which numbers she can move this quarter.

Sum each bucket and show her the three totals. Most clients discover that committed spending is larger than they assumed and is the only place a fast win lives. If fixed alone exceeds confirmed income, you are not in budgeting territory, you are in a housing decision, and that reframes the whole engagement.

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Setting the first ninety day milestone

One milestone, numeric, verifiable, and hers. Not three. Candidates, roughly in the order I would consider them:

• Build a starter cash cushion equal to one month of fixed costs, in her own account.
• Complete the account separation sequence and close the joint account cleanly.
• Cut committed spending by a stated dollar amount per month and redirect it automatically.
• Update every beneficiary designation on retirement accounts and insurance policies she controls, since designations override a will.
• Get the QDRO entered and the account actually transferred, if it is still sitting with the attorney.

Write it as a sentence with a number and a date. "By March 15 I will hold $2,400 in my own savings account, funded at $200 a week." Then decide now how you will verify it at the check in, because a milestone nobody checks is a wish.

What to escalate to the attorney or CPA

Stop and hand off when you hit any of these, and say why you are stopping:

• Ambiguity about what the decree requires, or a disagreement about what a clause means.
• Support not being paid, or paid short, which is an enforcement question.
• Any QDRO drafting, entry, or plan administrator rejection.
• Filing status, dependent claims, the release of exemption form, or the tax treatment of a property transfer.
• Title transfer, refinancing deadlines she is going to miss, or a lender refusing to remove her.
• Estate documents: the will, powers of attorney and health care directives that still name him.

Your value is not in answering those. It is in spotting them early and putting them on a dated list before they become emergencies.

Turning session one into a plan she keeps

What she leaves with matters more than what you covered. A shared plan document beats a folder of notes: the three bucket map with real dollars, the decree obligations on a calendar, the open items list, and one milestone with a date. MoneyMapCoach holds exactly that structure, then brings her back monthly to record whether the numbers moved. The first ninety days after a divorce are when tracking is worth the most, because everything is changing and nobody remembers what was agreed.