Meet your new BFF

Mark was confused: his wife was demanding their co-op apartment in the divorce, and he felt – deep in his heart – that she should have it. His friends and coworkers were telling him it was a bad deal to trade-off paying her “alimony” and give her the apartment. And so was I. When Mark came in for our next appointment, I showed him my number one secret weapon in divorce – and his new best friend: a calculator.

“When you break down the tax benefits to paying ‘alimony’ and look closely at avoiding capital gains in a sale of the home, you are losing,” I told Mark. And so did the calculator.

Once Mark and I factored in the costs of litigation (best-case and worst-case), and examined his investment and retirement accounts, he had a choice: would he give up $175k in exchange for a…