Women...Learn How to Prepare for a Divorce and Win What You Deserve!

I finalized my divorce just over one year ago. I'd have to say that my divorce was pretty amicable throughout, except when it got down to the negotiations of our assets.

My ex-husband had always liked to play war strategy games, and I soon realized that I would have to find a way to think like he would and out-strategize him in our negotiations. I knew that he would want to hang on to as much of the assets as possible and, more importantly, do so without confrontation. If I got confrontational, he would become secretive, reassess, and then come back with something that I would never have figured on and, knowing him, do so just before a deadline so I wouldn't have the time to try to figure a way around it. I also knew that he knew that anything financial was likely to send me running for the hills - I had such a discomfort level talking about, or even learning about, that type of stuff.

So I decided to get my game plan ready. This meant learning about finances, no matter how hard it seemed, and getting that accomplished quickly. I would have to lay low and basically play stupid in any conversations that we would have so he wouldn't see that I was gaining any knowledge. I also knew I needed to ensure that there would be certain things that I would receive in the distribution that would leave me feeling financially comfortable once this was all over with. In particular, I wanted nothing more than a roof over my head that would have a small enough mortgage on it so that if I ever lost my job, I would be able to handle a the payment on the salary of a temporary worker. I also wanted liquid assets - nothing that would be wrapped up in packages that would mean paying stiff penalties if you suddenly needed access to it (like retirement funds).

Soon after our separation, I began to execute my own strategy.

I started by picking up a book called Smart Women Finish Rich by David Bach which really helped me a lot. I also watched Suze Orman's shows on television quite a bit and read some of her articles on her website, SuzeOrman.com. In addition, I became a devout listener of The Dave Ramsey Show on the radio and tried to follow most of his principles.

Once I had more financial knowledge, I started reviewing our assets. My ex-husband had always saved as much as he could in 401ks and other retirement vehicles. This meant that there was quite a bit of money set aside that was up for grabs. In addition, we had a pretty sizable home, filled to the brim with furniture, antiques, high-tech devices, and much more. I really didn't want to have to go through the process of selling off anything, or having to itemize all of it and, as luck would have it, he didn't really care about it either. But he did want half of the value of the house. The problem was that the house had been appraised about two years before we split up and the value then was around $30K more than what it would have been at current market rates. He didn't believe that it was so much lower, since he never followed the real estate market in our area. I knew it was an accurate assessment, but I also knew that there had to be some way to prove this to him.

In addition, I realized that if I was able to keep the house, then the only other money that I would receive would be in the form of a retirement account distribution, less the amount equal to half the value of the house. This was not going to be much, and again, if I ever needed to tap it out - say hello to Uncle Sam.

I decided the best way to get around all this was to list the house at the current appraised value - and hope that it would not sell (being that the market was getting saturated and the economy was taking a downturn, this seemed likely), but remain open to the idea that I might end up moving. I put it on the market, it had a couple of showings at the beginning, and then it just sat for several months. I was overjoyed! I kept track of the days as they went by and finally took it off the market - just within a couple of days of a deadline that we had for submitting our final property and asset negotiations paperwork to the court.

The day after I took it off the market, I called up my ex-husband and told him that I didn't think that the timing was right to sell the house, that it would drag out our negotiations for much longer, and that I had another offer to make to him. At that time, we were set up with a 55/45 split of everything, in my favor. I offered to take a smaller split of the retirement assets (approximately 25%) if he let me keep the house and what was in it. Being that I caught him off guard with that phone call (something he would have tried to do with me), he said yes and I immediately called my attorney who drafted everything up and got the new agreement signed before he had a chance to do anything with it.

My attorney and I recalculated all of the figures, and it turned out that I ended up receiving approximately 80% of our entire asset pool in addition to gaining control of an affordable home, which was the most important thing to me. The real estate market is on a bit of an upturn in my area, so I may be able to get back to that original $30K over today's market value amount again.

The best part of all is that I've learned how to think and plan more strategically and have learned so much about personal finances that I now feel comfortable managing what I have and know where to look when I need additional help.

Do your homework women! It can certainly pay off for you as well.