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Along with the emotional pain and upheaval it brings, divorce can also wreak financial havoc for both parties, especially the lower-earning partner.

“The biggest difficulty for people coming out of divorce is that now they’re all alone,” said Helen Stephens, a certified financial planner at Karsten Tax & Financial Management in Fort Worth. “They’re overwhelmed with trying to make this budget, particularly if they weren’t working.”

Stephens and other experts say a divorce’s financial hammer often falls on the wife, who usually is the lower wage earner or may have stayed home full time to care for children.

“Alimony will only take them so far,” she said.

But divorce also has a financial impact on men.

“Men don’t realize how much essentially unpaid work their wife does for them, so they are not prepared,” said Janet Brumley, a family law attorney at Verner & Brumley P.C. in Dallas. The list includes such things as child care, cooking, domestic tasks and picking up the kids at school.

“Those are the things that dads don’t think about that will impact them in a financial way,” Brumley said.

Experts say rebuilding your financial life after divorce requires specific actions.

via Look forward after divorce, not back, to rebuild your personal finances | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Personal Finance | Dallas Business News.