If you have a joint bank account, ask your bank to freeze the account so that both signatures are required before any transactions can be made. If you're concerned that your soon-to-be ex is going to run off and really drain your account, you've got to be really cold-hearted about this.
"Kerry Hannon" is an United States/American author, career transition, personal finance and retirement expert, speaker and financial journalist,
Hannon is the author of nine books. Her latest is '" Love Your Job: The New Rules for Career Happiness, She is also the author of the gold-medal award-winning What's Next: Finding Your Passion and Your Dream Job in Your Forties, Fifties and Beyond' (Berkley, 2014) and the national bestseller "Great Jobs for Everyone 50+: Finding Work That Keeps You Happy and Healthy … And Pays the Bills ( Wiley September 2012). Hannon is the award-winning author of What's Next? Follow Your Passions and Find Your Dream Job (Chronicle Books). She is a columnist for The New York Times, AARP's Jobs Expert and writes the AARP "Great Jobs for Retirees" column. She also writes the “Second Verse” column for Forbes.com and is a contributing editor to Forbes magazine. She writes a money column for boomer women on the PBS website, Next Avenue. She is a contributing writer for Money magazine.
More Kerry Hannon on Wikipedia.Don't make any big investments. Have lunch with a friend one day a week, but don't buy a Mercedes.
When you go to get credit, they often look to see if you have a phone number in your name. If you don't, even if you are listed in the phone book at that number, it can be problematic.
You want to curl up in a ball and have somebody else make all the decisions for you. But this is the worst time to do that. You need to force yourself to make your own decisions.
If your standard of living is going to drop, you've got to pay real close attention to things like your credit rating and staying ahead of unsecured debt such as credit cards, ... That will be worth its weight in gold down the road.
Inform the companies in writing and call them as well. Tell them you want the accounts closed and that you are not responsible for charges from that point, period. Then make sure you have a credit card open in your name alone with Visa or MasterCard, one of the major revolving cards. A department store card isn't enough.
What is really frightening is that people don't know where everything is. Many women don't have a clue where a lot of the investments are or even who their life insurance agent is. They may have paid all the household bills and wrote the checks each month, but they didn't deal with the big-picture stuff. That's very traditional.
For women in particular, it's a good thing to remember. It doesn't affect your spouse's payment at all. In fact, they will never know when you start receiving your Social Security checks. But you need to have their Social Security number in hand.
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