The Marital Home
Acccording to Roberts, there are only three things that can be done with a marital home.

“You can sell it and split the equity, whether positive or negative,” she said. “You can continue to jointly own the marital residence, but only have one of the spouses live in the residence, or one spouse can buy out the other's interest in the home.”

Advisors need to be aware that their clients can shield some of their capital gains taxes from the sale of the home or their interest in the home if they were a primary resident of the house in two of the past five years, said Roberts. Reverse mortgages can also be used to purchase one party’s interest in the home.

Retirement Plans
Retirement plans are usually a couple’s second-largest asset after their house, according to Roberts. With 401(k)s and 403(b)s, the value of the plan is reported at least on a quarterly basis, but advisors need to account for the vesting schedule of the plan and also any outstanding loans and adjust the value of the plan accordingly.

“With defined benefit or pension plans, we recommend you find the current cash value to do the division,” she said. “Another way to do it is a percentage of the benefits, especially in the case where someone is two to three years away from retirement, you can specify that the soon-to-be-ex-spouse will get a percentage of the pension payout in retirement.”

For non-IRA qualified accounts, a qualified domestic relations order, or QDRO, should be used to divide accounts, but advisors should avoid drafting QDROs themselves. Plan administrators could reject an incorrectly drafted order, which would require the QDRO to be redrafted and cause a significant delay in a client receiving their assets.

Insurance
If a divorcing client has relied on their ex-spouse’s employer health coverage, they will need to address their insurance needs. One expensive option is to remain on the ex-spouse’s coverage via a COBRA plan, which allows an individual to retain coverage for up to 36 months in the case of divorce.

“When you are being covered by COBRA, you not only have to pay the employee portion of the premium, but also the employer portion of the premium plus a 2% administrative fee,” said Roberts. Insurance can often be found cheaper on public exchanges.

Another insurance consideration involves child or spousal support. Given that it’s usually important that child or spousal support is a guaranteed income stream, an insurance policy could be used in a divorce settlement to generate that income, said Rogers, but “the recipient of the support should be the owner of the insurance."

They should be able to access the policy so that they know if it lapses due to non-payment, she added.

Long-term care insurance for either party is best purchased before a divorce is finalized, as premiums are less for married couples, said Rogers.

Post-Divorce Planning
Rogers said that advisors should also help their clients ensure that all of their documents, accounts and policies are revisited and updated post-divorce.

Many individuals fall into nightmare scenarios because they fail to take the crucial step of post-divorce planning, she said. “Individuals will go through the entire divorce process but then never do any of the follow-up work. They don’t change beneficiaries on their insurance or workplace retirement plans. They don’t have their wills re-executed, so that if they die their ex-spouse won’t suddenly become the executor of their will.”