Questions people ask
How do I prepare for divorce financially?
The short answer
Preparing financially for divorce usually starts with locating originals — tax returns, statements, deeds, titles, loan documents and any marital agreement — and listing what exists and where. Strategy belongs to a family-law attorney and a financial professional; organization is the part within your control.
The longer answer
The months before anything is filed are the easiest time to do this, because gathering records then is ordinary housekeeping. Nobody remarks on someone filing tax returns in a folder. The sequence matters less than finishing it. Finishing before anyone is in a hurry makes every later step quieter.
Start with the originals listed in the answer above. Next comes anything that shows what you owned before the marriage, since those records are the oldest and the easiest to have lost. Last is a written list of what exists and where it is, including everything that stays at home and everything that lives only online. For valuables at home, a dated photograph of each item is a reasonable entry.
If you share a cloud account, assume the other person can read it. The same holds for a shared inbox where statements arrive, a family computer with saved passwords, and a joint account's paperless notices. None of this calls for anything clever. It calls for knowing where each record is and who else can see it.
The organizing side of preparing covers the list in more detail, and the stage before anyone files has its own page. Strategy is not ours to give. What to ask for and what to expect belong to a family-law attorney and a financial professional. An accountant or planner who works with divorcing clients can take the numbers further than any list.
Gathering records is not moving property
Collecting records and moving property are different acts. Copying a joint statement so you know what exists is organization. Moving money, removing shared valuables, or taking originals that belong to both of you is something to raise with your attorney before you do it, because it can carry consequences in the case that are hard to undo afterward. When in doubt, copy rather than take.
A vault box belongs to the first category. If you rent one, your attorney should know it exists, and it is discoverable like any other account, which is the point. A dated record of what you kept, and when you started keeping it, supports the numbers you later swear to. Your attorney can point to it; you do not have to explain it.
If a case has already been filed and disclosure is underway, the order changes. Talk to counsel first, and treat storage as the last step rather than the first. Renting a box in the middle of a contested case, without your attorney knowing, is the one version of this we would talk you out of.