Beaverton and Portland Family Law Financial Analyst

In law school, Mediator Matthew House received significant training in divorce-related finance. He decided several years ago to gain additional financial expertise to provide superior service to clients.

Matthew's expertise as a divorce mediator and Family Law Financial Analyst enables him to fuse the two into a comprehensive process that no individual divorce mediator in the Portland metropolitan area has replicated.

A Family Law Financial Analyst is a professional who has a law degree and substantial additional training in divorce finance. Law school touches on financial concepts but only as they relate to the law. When your divorce professional is thoroughly versed in the language of divorce finance, you can be more confident that you will have a more thorough divorce.

A Family Law Financial Analyst is not the same as a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst®. Matthew purchased and completed the training modules to become a CDFA® but did not pursue the certification. He concluded that the training was not adequate for his clients' needs, so he spent two years developing a comprehensive divorce finance curriculum.

What is a Family Law Financial Analyst?

Why is it better to have a Family Law Financial Analyst as your divorce mediator?

From the beginning to the end of your mediation process, having a Family Law Financial Analyst as your divorce mediator will provide you with myriad advantages. Matthew spent 18 months designing a proprietary, five-step, 35-point process for asset division and debt division in an Oregon divorce. It does not make your divorce take longer to complete; it just makes it more detailed to give you greater understanding of your options and confidence about your choices. Matthew’s detailed process will make your divorce mediation uniquely comprehensive and complete.

Matthew has the depth and breadth of knowledge to identify and understand your assets. He will give you several options for each financial decision that you must make in mediation – typically at least four options for the handling of each asset and at least three choices for handling each debt or other decision.

Matthew will help you value your assets correctly and understand an important concept called the Net Distributable Value (NDV), which is crucial to the equitable division of assets and liabilities in a divorce in Oregon. Similarly, the tax implications of your assets (and, to a lesser extent, your liabilities) affect the NDV.

Most mediators don’t even mention NDV, even though it’s the foundation of the fairness and accuracy of the financial picture. Matthew makes it a high priority.

Identifying Assets and Debts in an Oregon Divorce

At the outset, Matthew will help you identify your assets. It seems basic, but people frequently make mistakes. The difference between the names of different assets is sometimes subtle, but it can greatly affect the scope of your options and the effects of your choices.

Discovery (the legal term for supplying information and exchanging documents) is the basis for understanding the assets and debts. The information that Matthew will request from you will provide a complete picture of what type of asset it is. Once Matthew reviews your discovery documents, it will be clear for each asset or debt:

The type of asset or debt
In whose name it is held or titled (this does not necessarily determine rights and responsibilities in divorce)
The location or financial institution of the asset or debt
More particular information about the specific details of the asset or debt
Some form of valuation or the information necessary to form a basic valuation
The types of taxes that may apply to the ownership, transfer, or sale (for assets)

If necessary, Matthew can help you sort out, based on certain factors whether an asset or debt is marital, partially marital, or separate.

Giving You Diverse Options and Best Practices

Matthew will give you several options for each financial decision that you must make in mediation – typically at least four options for the handling of each asset and at least three choices for handling each debt or other decision. He will share with you what he sees as the pros and cons of each approach.

Sometimes, there is one clear approach that people generally take with a particular asset, regardless of their individual circumstances. Much more often, clients choose to compare the costs and benefits based on the weight they give to each of the factors that Matthew will present for them to consider. Option A might be better for most people, but if Option B fits the circumstances better for a particular family, Option B is the way to go. Ultimately, you're making what you believe are the best decisions for yourselves and your children.

Valuation and Net Distributable Value

Often, the valuation of an asset or debt can be obtained without much effort. Frequently, it's listed somewhere in the discovery. When a valuation must be specifically obtained, the options for the valuation may run the gamut from an informal estimate to a paid professional appraisal. Matthew can advise you as to the best practices for obtaining the valuation. The final decision is yours -- whether you want to pay a professional, utilize free resources available online, or rely on your mutual sense of fairness.

It's important to understand that the raw value – however you obtain it – is probably not the same as the Net Distributable Value. If there are no transaction fees, commissions, taxes, or expenses of sale that will eventually be owed upon the sale of the asset, and assuming that no paid preparation of documents is necessary to handle the asset, the Net Distributable Value would be the same as the raw value.

However, for almost all assets (U.S. currency and depreciated personal property or household goods would be among the limited examples of exceptions to that norm), one or more of those fees, taxes, loan balances, or other expenses would be subtracted from the value.

The NDV is what we use to standardize the comparison of assets. For example, if you had $25,000 in cash, you would have something more valuable than someone who had a car that was worth $30,000 but had a $10,000 loan balance. If you looked only at the raw value, the person who had the car – financed though it was – would have appeared to have the more valuable asset. Similarly, a car loan balance of $10,000 at 7% interest is not as much of a financial burden as a credit card with a $10,000 balance at 22% interest. The NDV is the way to dig beneath the surface to even out those factors to be able to compare one asset to another in a mediation negotiation. Matthew is skilled at computing the NDV and applying it asset by asset and debt by debt.

The Big Picture: A Holistic View of Finances

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