“Your emotional conditions create your financial conditions.”

–Yvonne Bynoe, a self-sufficiency coach for women and creator of Sophisticated Woman and Mama

Let’s face it.  Divorce is hard.  On children, on parents, family and friends.  Practically, emotionally, and indeed, financially.  And that’s just the reality of taking the same income, or incomes, and stretching it across 2 households instead of one.  Then of cour$e, thee are lawyer$’ fee$.

That said, there is another level of divorce-related financial distress that has more to do with feelings than legalities and logistics.  It’s not that money is the root cause of most divorces (Turns out, that bit of conventional wisdom is not supported statistically: “If we look at all the causes of divorce, financial problems can only account for 5% of the effect.”).  So what are the emotion-fueled money problems we’ve heard about from divorced and divorcing co-parents?

~excessive retail therapy (“The first thing he did once the ink was dry on our divorce decree was buy a motorcycle.  His dream toy, I understand, but that was not the time to do that.  And within a three months, bill collectors were calling the house looking for him.  Child support?  Not a dime.”)

~poor budgeting and planning (“I encouraged her to put together a post-divorce budget because we both had some belt-tightening to do.  But she was so pissed at me, she told me to mind my business.  She was right; it really was none of my business, except that she’s now in financial free-fall due to overspending and failure to pay her bills.  Our kids are suffering, and she’s still pissed at me, this time because I won’t bail her out.”)

~revenge and rebound spending (“All the stuff he never bought for me, I went out and bought for myself before he could blow any more of it on his new girlfriend.  After he took her to Mexico with OUR money, he tried to close out our joint savings account; too bad I got to it first.  Now he’s crying poor mouth, and I don’t care.  If I have to struggle and do without, so should he.  After all, he’s the one who wanted the divorce, not me.” )

~failure to become adequately educated on issues such as child support, alimony, divorce-related tax and consumer debt considerations, and property settlements (“She is really ignorant as to how divorce works.  She thinks child support is “mom payments” or something, like she’s entitled, even though we have shared custody and the formula comes out with me not having to pay her child support.  Because she feels like I ‘owe’ her emotionally because I was a failure in the marriage–I admit that–she’s obsessed with trying to make me ‘pay’ financially, even when it makes no sense, even if she’s ruining herself financially in the process of trying to get back at me.  I think that had she educated herself about how all this stuff works, and stop focusing all of her energy on me, she might not be in such a hole right now.”

Even though no gender has a monopoly on emotionally charged money misbehavior, Yvonne Bynoe, a self-sufficiency coach for women and creator of Sophisticated Woman and Mama, notes, “Many women fall into that trap.  They get emotional about money and don’t plan for their needs, or they try to use money matters as a weapon.It’s not the other person’s job to look out for our interests. In this day and  age, you can look up information online.”

So what does this mean for co-parents whose emotions are running high with negative implications for their financial situation?  Our best advice: Heal.  Address the emotions that are understandably a part of your personal landscape in the wake of your break up.  Even if it was 5 or 10 years ago, what you may chalk up to as “money problems”, may have roots in unresolved anger, resentment, fear, and disappointment.  Deal with the emotions, and see if your financial circumstances don’t change in some way.

For more information and help recovering financially from your divorce or making a divorce financial game plan, check out Yvonne’s coaching programs and other products and services here.