I have seen 3 close friends/siblings go through divorce in the past year. All have kids but none are fire.
Maybe the best insurance is to keep seperate accounts, make about the same income & don't fight.
The best of the 3 cases could have gotten messy (literally the ex's words) but if you agree on how to split things the divorce should cost about 2K to make it official. Try to not fight & save your money. Find a lawyer who doesn't want to fight. Her's literally said if this goes to court I'll pass it over to my associate.
Read your laws, disclose your assets, start an excel spread sheet & do a lot of the work yourself. DIY Mustacian divorce ;)
They agreed to keep their own bank accounts & pensions, kept their assets from before the 7y marriage, then she remortgaged the house & bought him out.
The kids can make it messy but I think they found a good solution, here it is...
In most places child support is not an option. It is calculated based on time with the parent and income.
But Mr. X didn't EVER want to pay anything. Mrs. X actually makes more. But Mr. has the "potential" to make more so it could get tricky if he claims he can't affort things. Kids are primarily with Mrs. But see Mr. About 40% so that would be considered 50:50 here. If they earned the same amount no money should change hands.
Technically Mrs. Should have to pay some support then they split extras like daycare, dental, activities...
So they agreed that she would just pay for ALL the extra expenses. These are usually split proportional to income.
Currently because Mrs. X pays for child care & all the extras, even if she paid him child support the Mr. should pay her back the support + $200/month.
Well there would be no chance to get the money back from him so the $200 is just a wash.
Crunch the numbers in a few years with no child care and she probably needs to pay him a bit.
Crunch them again if the kids have braces & he should pay her. It could be a never ending back and fourth.
Because she makes more, in liew of child support, she agreed to pay for ALL the extras.
He got a bit carried away in his first demand on the extra list incuuding prom dress, cars + insurance at 16, wedding dress and a few more things. She cut it back to the main extras listed in our laws like child care, medical, dental, activities etc. and added the clause "within her budget".
Honestly, I don't know what Dad wouldn't want to spoil their kids with a few extras but at least he's not obligated to do so.
I am a child of divorce too. My Dad is still bitter for the money he paid my mom. Honestly, I think that was just her fair share of the house. My mom complains about how little the child support was as it didn't increase in 16y. Anyway, that's another story but not a model one so I'll leave it out.
Again, the best insurance is to just crunch the numbers yourself and try not to fight.