What money says: When you get a divorce
The most expensive reset I never saw coming.
Editor’s note: This is Part 4 of a four-part series, “What Money Says,” looking at how life’s events — from becoming a parent to starting over after divorce — can reshape our relationship with money. | Part 1: Becoming a parent | Part 2: Buying a home | Part 3: Changing careers
I didn’t think about money when my marriage ended.
I thought about survival. About my daughter. About how I was supposed to rebuild a life I never planned on losing.
The financial side felt distant at first. There was too much to process: court dates, piles of paperwork, conversations that went over my head, documents I didn’t fully understand and didn’t have the capacity to question. I showed up. I signed. I just wanted to move forward.
And then, slowly, reality set in. It showed up in invoices. Court orders. Withdrawals. Loans. Obligations.
And it didn’t stop coming. It still hasn’t.
Divorce has cost me a small fortune.
Well into six figures — and counting.
Money that didn’t build anything. Didn’t grow. Didn’t return. It might as well have been launched into Lake Michigan.
It’s hard not to think about what that capital could have become now that I actually know what to do with it.
That’s when money finally started talking.
I remember standing in the courthouse during a break, listening as the attorneys went back and forth.
At some point, the conversation turned to what I could pay. My attorney pushed back. Said I didn’t have the funds.
The response came quickly.
“Well tell him to take it out of his retirement.”
I was close enough to hear it. Close enough to know it wasn’t friendly advice.
That’s when money started talking in a new language. Divorce had rewritten the question like nothing else before.
Now, it was different. Sharper. Harder. Colder.
Money started asking: Who do you trust?
It wasn’t myself anymore. Money was just how that distrust showed up in my life. For more than five years, I froze.
I avoided my accounts. Retirement funds sat untouched. Investments went unmade. Interest charges accrued.
Every dollar felt like a decision I couldn’t afford to make — not just because I didn’t know what to do, but because I didn’t trust that it would matter. That it would stick. That I could rely on anything lasting.
It wasn’t just money I avoided. It was myself. Every decision felt like a trap.
Could I even rely on my judgment? Could I make a choice that wouldn’t blow up later? I didn’t know anymore.
I stopped trusting others too. Attorneys, court staff, even the so-called experts I was paying felt like liabilities. Every interaction felt heavy, carrying stakes I couldn’t fully control.
The system was supposed to protect me, but instead, it reminded me how vulnerable I was.
Beyond that, I questioned everything else. Who was I if I wasn’t just a father providing for Parker? What was my purpose?
For years, I didn’t know. Survival mode was where I was stuck.
The mental and emotional toll naturally bled into the financial. I paused my dream career, taking a demotion and a pay cut to fight for my family.
Before long, I lost my passion for the only job I had ever known, ever wanted. Each morning on the elliptical, I watch colleagues I grew up with appear on television, in studios I once dreamed of calling home.
But the world suddenly felt bigger than my own plans, and problems I hadn’t anticipated kept surfacing.
I was suffering in silence, toiling away as both a workaholic and a functioning alcoholic.
But I’ve always been a supportive father, and that’s what kept me going.
I owed it to Parker to provide a life beyond survival. I had to start small. One article. One podcast. One book. One account. One rollover. Tiny acts reminded me I could still make wise choices, and each step chipped away at my insecurities.
Each choice taught me I could trust myself again.
That I could rely on systems if I took the time to understand them.
That money could be a tool, not a warning.
Slowly, I began to see a life beyond simply providing for Parker — a life that was mine to shape, not just survive.
Divorce didn’t just cost money; it reset everything I thought I could count on.
It took time and intention, but now I make each choice deliberately.
And I’ve learned to trust myself. Finally.
The freeze is the part no one talks about.
Not the bad decisions. The absence of decisions.
Accounts avoided. Statements unopened. Choices deferred until deferral itself becomes the choice.
It doesn’t look like a crisis from the outside. But it costs just as much as one.
What you named — that distrust of your own judgment — is where the real damage lives. Not in the settlement. Not in the attorneys’ fees.
In the years of compound interest you didn’t earn because you couldn’t trust yourself to begin.
A very honest and vulnerable article. Thank you for sharing.