Zen Services

The role of the CDFA® professional is to help both the clients and attorney or mediator understand how the financial decisions made today will impact the client’s financial future. A CDFA® professional must have years of experience in a financial planning, accounting or legal background and goes through an intensive training program to become skilled in analyzing and providing expertise related to the financial issues of divorce, to provide a peaceful financial separation.

Family Law/Wealth Management Firm Contract Work

Zen Divorce Solutions contracts with family law firms to manage all document and information gathering for your clients’ disclosure forms. Zen can work with your clients on disclosures, division of community/marital assets, on a pre- and post-tax basis, as well as projections for net income after expenses and taxes and net worth analysis. Zen is able to provide services anywhere in the US. If your family law practice would benefit from streamlining your focus and simultaneously increasing your bandwidth to best serve your clients, click below for more information. Or make Zen part of your holistic planning services for your wealth management clients.

Psychotherapist and Mediator Support

Zen Divorce Solutions can assist your therapist or mediator to determine support, identify all assets and liabilities and create scenarios to illustrate equitable division. Zen provides financial analysis to both parties, educate them on the changes to their financial picture and assist them with making the necessary changes to achieve their financial goals.

Financial Neutral

If you have determined you prefer to complete your divorce with minimal input from attorneys, or if you have decided the family law litigation process is not a good fit for you and your family or you want to learn more about the supportive team approach known as Collaborative Law, Zen Divorce Solutions can help. Zen prepares the Preliminary Declaration of Disclosure and presents multiple scenarios to illustrate an equitable division and help couples make an informed decision. Zen will collaborate with you until both of you are in agreement with the outcome. I explore solutions which will reduce expenses and taxes.

Litigation Support

I strategize with your attorney as an advocate for you. My services can include one or more of the following: creating commonly-used statewide family law Judicial Council forms including the Disclosures (Financial Affidavit, Sworn Financial Statement, etc.), demonstrating need or income available for maintenance, lifestyle analysis, financial tracing, and expert witness testimony.

Pension Valuation, including CalSTRS and CalPERS

The valuation method I use is the most sophisticated: I calculate the expected value of each year's payment, and then discount all years back to the present for both mortality and time. There is no single "life expectancy" in this method. Methods that use a single "life expectancy" are simpler methods, and cannot accurately account for some factors, such as changing interest rates or cost of living adjustments (COLAs).

There are less sophisticated ways of valuing pensions. There are different ways of valuing pensions. But there is no way that is actuarially "more accurate".

Post-Divorce Support

Post-Divorce Support is to progress through the final steps necessary to completely separate financially on all assets and liabilities. We establish a budget, determine how much you can spend annually, address credit scores, review insurance, update your beneficiaries, ensure titling is correct, and set an appointment for both tax and estate planning with a trusted expert.