by Steven Levey

Financial planners encounter many different questions in their day-to-day operations, and are looking for tools that can help with the start of a practice, compliance with regulations, ways to communicate information, and overall practice management.

Do I register? How do I get licensed? What licenses do I need? Then there are questions from clients on retirement, estate planning, marriage and divorce.

Below are some stand-alone products that can help both new and seasoned practitioners in their operations.

Family Law Software v. 5.01
Family Law Software Inc.

The two founders of Family Law Software Inc. were partners in the company that developed TaxCut. There are four products for financial professionals, including Family Law Software Professional Pension Evaluator, Professional Edition, Professional Deluxe Edition, and Office Pack.

Pension Evaluator is designed to estimate what a defined-benefit pension plan is worth. Calculations include estimation of the monthly benefit based upon company statistics. Features include what-if scenarios for salary increases, early or late retirement ages, and changes in interest rates. Professional Edition includes a suite of four products: Financial Advisor Professional Edition, Divorce Calculators, Child Support Guideline Calculators, and Arrears Calculators. The Professional Deluxe Edition combines the two prior products, Pension Evaluator and Professional Edition, at a savings. The Office Pack includes everything in the Professional Deluxe Edition, plus CD software to distribute to clients and an listing on the Family Law Software Professional Directory.

The program has tabs for start, clients, info, advisor, calculator, support, pensions, and arrears. The start tab reveals instructions for the other tabs. The client tab allows the professional to access an existing client or create a new one. Info allows the planner to input client name, address, date of birth, and date of marriage, among other vital statistics.

Clicking on the advisor tab provides input for goals & assumptions, children, wages & assumptions, living expenses, goals, homes, investments, debts, cars, furniture, IRA, 401(k), pension, Social Security, life insurance, tax filing status, and results. Results shows graphs and tables for gross income, annual expenses, annual taxes, income taxes after five to 20 years, income after expenses, gross cumulative expenses, marital assets, division of marital assets, separate assets by category, and built-in gain.

The calculator section includes income & tax, property division, alimony division, sale of home, and alimony recapture. The income & tax category allows the planner to enter income on a cash flow or income tax basis. A continue button on the bottom of the screen produces a report to show the income and taxes associated with each party.

The property division worksheet uses total, husband, and wife columns. Enter the data in total, then an amount for either husband or wife, and the program calculates the difference. The report generated indicates the percentage of change and amount necessary to affect desired changes.

The alimony buyout is an alimony vs. property settlement calculator. Data required include the husband’s and wife’s highest federal and state tax bracket, paying in a lump sum, or monthly. Answers will appear to questions such as making a single payment in lieu of a series of payments, or if the wife receives monthly alimony for ten years, if it is better, tax-wise, to label it child support.

The sale of home area addresses the timing, costs, and division of sale proceeds. A most interesting tab is the last one for alimony recapture. Tax authorities look for alimony disguised as property settlements after the third year into an agreement. The exposure can actually be calculated and identified using this section.

There are customized support calculators for California, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Florida. Pensions can be calculated for Family Law Software using either the GATT or PBGC methods.

A final feature of the Office Pack is a listing on www.FamilyLawSoftware.com as a service provider in a number of categories, such as attorney, mediator, accountant, forensic accountant, financial planner or psychologist. A potential customer can locate a professional according to category, state, county and zip code.

Most planners could use a tax projection planner and develop their own spreadsheets to create divorce models. The obvious trade off is the time and effort involved, against the cost of the program.

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