30 July 2025
A financial adviser plays a critical, proactive, and ongoing role in helping clients navigate the financial dimensions of marriage and divorce. Their involvement extends from pre-marriage planning to crisis support during divorce, aiming to protect clients’ long-term financial well-being.
1. Core role in divorce context
- Prevent financial damage: Divorce is a major life event that can derail financial success. It is the adviser’s duty to protect clients from this risk.
- Divorce-aware planning: Advisers should have a basic understanding of divorce law and its implications to help clients "divorce better"—with less destruction to wealth.
2. Financial advisers help prevent a bad divorce
They identify and help mitigate three main potential problems::
- Poor financial planning: The area where financial advisers contribute most.
- Poor communication: Often predates the divorce and leads to imbalances in financial knowledge and power.
- Poor crisis decision-making: Advisers serve as calm, rational voices to guide clients through emotional, high-stakes financial decisions.
3. Role before marriage or early in marriage
- Divorce-proofing: Help clients understand and structure their marriage as a financial partnership.
- Antenuptial contracts (ANCs): Advisers should encourage ANC discussions to define asset ownership, liability, and division in the event of divorce.
- Education: Ensure both spouses understand the implications of the marital regime they choose (in/out of community of property, with/without accrual).
- Communication facilitation: Encourage both spouses - especially women - to engage actively in financial matters, creating transparency and trust.
4. Role during marriage
- Monitoring & advising: Continually guide clients in running their marital “financial partnership” in line with the chosen marital regime.
- Early intervention: The sooner advisers help clients understand their financial structure, the healthier the financial partnership (and possibly the marriage) will be.
5. Understanding South African marital regimes
- In community of property: Joint estate, shared and debts, little individual autonomy.
- Out of community of property with accrual: Separate estates, but wealth accumulated during marriage is shared at divorce.
- Out of community of property without accrual: Complete financial separation, though courts may still redistribute in certain circumstances.
Advisers must help clients with the following:
- To understand what marital regime applies to their marriage.
- Tracking commencement values and estate growth (especially for accrual claims).
- Planning asset management and potential division.
6. Advising on complex divorce elements
- Accrual calculation: Advisers can assist with accurate financial record-keeping, inflation-adjusted commencement values, and valuations.
- Trusts: Explain the risks of trust being attacked during divorce (e.g., sham trust or alter ego argument).
- Pension interest claims: Vital area where advisers can help ensure orders are legally enforceable against the fund and negotiations are based on accurate values, especially post two-pot reform.
7. Support during divorce
- Reality-checking decisions: Clients may be emotionally compromised. Advisers provide clarity and long-term perspective.
- Coordinating with lawyers & retirement funds: They help ensure that settlements and court orders are practical and enforceable.
- Asset discovery & valuation: Advisers help uncover hidden or misrepresented and facilitate fair valuations.
Conclusion
A financial adviser in a divorce context acts as:
- A planner (before and during marriage),
- A protector (against poor financial decisions),
- A translator (of legal-financial frameworks),
- A coordinator (with lawyers, retirement funds, and spouses),
- And often a stabiliser during emotionally charged times.
An adviser’s role is essential in preventing financial devastation, ensuring fairness in asset division, and promoting transparency and foresight throughout the marriage lifecycle.
