Posts by Steven B. Ockerman

The COVID-19 pandemic shook the entire world in 2020. Even a year later we are all still feeling the effects. As the unemployment rate rose to new highs, the stock market dropped health insurance, and the ability to fund savings suffered drastically. It appears that many may not recover for years to come. All of…

At some point, you have probably heard that 50% of marriage end in divorce. That is not really accurate, because it is averaging first marriage divorce rates with second (or more) marriage divorce rates, which skews the numbers. But there is one divorce statistic that is solid: between 70% and 80% of child marriages –…

If you ask divorced people what led to their marriage ending, you will hear a lot of different answers. Maybe they were poor communicators. Maybe they knew the marriage was a mistake from the start. Maybe they simply drifted away from one another. But the one reason that pops up the most is money. Few…

One of the more common causes of separation and divorce is financial incompatibility. Perhaps one spouse is a spendthrift, and one cannot stop buying. Or, perhaps, one spouse has a serious gambling addiction, and the other did not know until after they were married. Maybe the couple gets into serious debt after some kind of…

Going through a divorce can feel like one of the loneliest, most heartbreaking times in your life. Usually when you hit tough moments, you lean on your friends and family to get you through. For some reason, divorce isn’t always one of those times when all of your friends will rally around you. It can…

Generally speaking, both parties to a divorce want to walk away with as much as they each can. (Rarely will you hear a spouse say “whatever it takes, just end it.”) Usually there is a fight over who contributed more to the marriage financially and what types of contributions count. A spouse who works and…

Going through a divorce is much like working through the death of a loved one where you experience stages akin to the grieving process. Most people do not go from saying “Okay, I’m getting a divorce,” to filing paperwork and starting over without doing a lot of introspection. Whether you are at the beginning, middle…

Divorce is a scary idea for many people. You’ve become used to a certain routine and maybe you even have fears of losing the lifestyle you helped to build and planned to enjoy for the rest of your life. Change is difficult, and there doesn’t seem to be a simple playbook to guide you through…

North Carolina law typically forbids dividing an individual’s inheritance between spouses during divorce. It doesn’t matter if the inheritance is cash, a house, stocks – an inheritance is that person’s separate property. Further, this counts whether the spouse received the bequest before or after the marriage. Although this is the general rule when it comes…