Most guides to the divorce process are written from the legal side: what gets filed, when it is served, which conference comes next. That is the right place to start, and your attorney will walk you through it. But every legal step also carries a financial decision, and in Westchester, New York, where a home, retirement accounts, and sometimes a business make up a sizable estate, those decisions compound. Here is the process stage by stage, with the money questions worth answering at each one.

A 401(k) is often the largest or second-largest asset a couple owns, and dividing it is more involved than splitting a bank account. You cannot simply agree on a number and move the money…

Divorce is one of the moments an estate plan is most likely to fail quietly. The documents you signed years ago — the will, the beneficiary forms, the powers of attorney — usually still name the person you just divorced…

"Who gets what" is the question at the center of most divorces, and the answer is less obvious than people expect. New York does not simply cut the marital estate in half...

If retirement accounts are part of your divorce, you will almost certainly hear the term "QDRO" at some point — usually late, and usually with a sense that it should have come up sooner…

In high-conflict custody and visitation matters, the parent who can document what actually happened holds a real advantage. Memories are contested and easy to dispute; a careful, contemporaneous written record is much harder to dismiss.‍..

Custody modification petitions are almost as common as the original petitions. People often establish custody when their children are relatively young, and as the children age or circumstances shift, the arrangement no longer fits…

An order of protection is not necessarily permanent or fixed. Depending on the circumstances, either party can ask the court to modify it, terminate it, or extend it.‍..

If you have ever been granted an order of protection, you already know the order is only as good as your ability to enforce it. New York gives you two practical routes, and they are not mutually exclusive — many people use both.‍.. ‍

The settlement is signed. The judge has entered the judgment. The case is closed.‍ And then, for most people, the real work begins.‍..

One of the quieter realities of a divorce is how dramatically the household budget changes the moment two people start running two homes instead of one.‍..

Tax is the dimension of a high net worth divorce that hides in plain sight. It does not appear in the headlines of the settlement agreement. It does not get argued about in court. And yet it can quietly reshape the value of every line item on the page.‍

For business owners, divorce introduces a level of complexity that most legal advice does not fully anticipate. The business is not just an asset on a balance sheet. It is the engine of the family's income, often the largest piece of the estate, and frequently the most illiquid.‍.. ‍

For most high-net-worth households, the single largest asset is not the house. It is the combined balance of retirement accounts: 401(k)s, IRAs, deferred compensation, and pensions.‍ When those accounts have to be divided in a divorce, the work is not simply mathematical…