taxes
Splitting up may be the right thing to do. To help you recognize the mistakes you may be making now—and to avoid future missteps—here are 15 of the biggest and most frequent divorce blunders.
Written by Gabrielle Linzer and Christina Parrella for AOL Health.
More from AOL Health:
How an unmarried but completely committed couple manages money.
A marriage may or may not be a union of love. It is always a union of property. No matter how you conduct your affairs—joint or separate checking accounts; rooms, even homes, of your own—the state regards you as a unit. The day you sign the license, you and your spouse are taxed as one. And if you break up, you become half of one: it divides your wealth in two. Prenuptial agreements can prevent the foregoing, but prenups are not always enforced (and they never supersede child-support laws). Anyway, lots of people find prenups distasteful. Marriage, they … Read More
He hid money from his wife, but his tax return spilled the beans.
Being a newly married couple involves adjusting to life as husband and wife, reminiscing about your nuptials, and sorting through what presents to keep and which to return—rarely does it involve preparing for the relationship to end. The sad reality, though, is that the lifespan of a marriage can be shorter than that of the loan taken out for a young couple's new house.
As the child of a divorced family, I got to see first-hand how lawyer bills stack up and how a woman's scorn can lead to a man sleeping in a car without money, food or change … Read More
With Tax Day coming up we solicited stories about people who found out a...
With Tax Day coming up we solicited stories about people who found out a secret about their spouse through doing their taxes. I was shocked by some of the submissions we received. Almost half of the essays were written by women who discovered that their husbands were making more money than they told their wives. In some cases the men were hording money to the detriment of the family—the kids needed new shoes or braces and the family couldn't afford them. Two women wrote about how they worked full-time (one even took on a second job) and put all their … Read More
Filing your first tax return as a married couple is no honeymoon.
Most wedding planning checklists end with the part about getting married. Once the honeymoon bags have been unpacked and the final thank you note has been mailed, all that's really left to do is sit back and debate which wedding presents to keep and which ones to toss.
However, come April, there's a whole new set of questions that need consideration. Will you and your new hubby file joint tax returns? Does the government have your new married name on record? And can the excess wedding gifts you donated to charity really count as a write-off?
Just because you've practiced … Read More
