About Me
Diane C Pappas, CDFA®, CQS™, Certified Mediator
Having gone through my own divorce, I understand the reasons that have brought you to my website. Divorce is one of the most difficult life events to go through. The process from beginning to end can be overwhelming, scary and paralyzing.
You have so many questions :
- Will we have to sell our home?
- Will I have enough money to pay my bills?
- Am I going to be okay in retirement?
- Maybe your spouse has always managed the money and you don’t even know what you have for assets.
- Maybe you are the breadwinner and are afraid that you will be left with nothing.
- Maybe you just want to know what it might look like if you decided to ask your spouse for a divorce.
This is where I can help. Did you know that more and more people are seeking the help of a divorce financial expert before they even contact an attorney? About 80% of my clients did.
As a Certified Divorce Financial Analyst® (CDFA), I am uniquely qualified to help you understand how a divorce will affect your financial situation by analyzing the short and long-term impacts of any proposed settlement and by identifying any potential tax pitfalls or beneficial tax provisions. I spend the time to educate and empower you with the financial information you need to make some of the most difficult and important decisions of your life.
My analysis will offer options to preserve family income and maximize the division of marital assets.
As a single mom of two wonderful adult daughters (then 12 and 15 when my divorce started), I know first hand the struggles and challenges that couples often face in divorce. My goal as a CDFA is to provide my clients with peace-of-mind in knowing that the settlement they ultimately agree to, is the best one based on their own unique financial situation. We work together to address your own unique financial challenges and I offer solutions based in reality to solve them.
My Passion and My Mission
I believe that you can’t really appreciate what it is like to go through something like a divorce unless you have experienced it yourself. This provides me with a unique insight into what my clients are feeling and what their concerns and needs are. My passion focuses on finding solutions for those concerns and needs. I know what will work post-divorce and what will not. Because of this, my clients appreciate my ability to empathize with them. My mission is to educate and empower all my clients with the tools to navigate the perfect storm of divorce. Don’t let divorce blow your finances off course. Let me help calm the waters by working with you as a trusted member of your divorce team.
Why I Do This ?
I do this work because when I was where you are now, I was scared to death and did not have the same level of knowledge of the finances as my husband did. I did not know if the settlement proposals being put on the table were good for me in the long-term or even the short term for that matter. I did not have the information I needed to make the informed decisions I was being asked to make. I knew I could do something to help others.
After the divorce, I found myself struggling to maintain the lifestyle we had as a family and I knew I had to do something to change that. How could I take a bad situation and turn it into something positive?
Since I wanted to be in control of my money and have the knowledge to make informed financial decisions, I became a financial planner. Once there, I became a CDFA, because that is where my true passion lay. To read more of My Story, click here : https://solutionsfordivorce.com/honored-to-have-received-the-idfa-2023-lifetime-achievement-award/
Now for the Boring But Important Stuff.
I am the Owner and Founder of Solutions For Divorce LLC, a fee-only, boutique divorce financial planning firm serving the Greater Boston area including the North and South Shores and MetroWest. I am also a trained Mediator and function as a Divorce Mediator for people who want a more amicable way to settle and resolve both the financial and non-financial issues of their unique situation. If you already have a Mediator, I can work with both spouses or only one to help support you on understanding and resolving the financial issues of your divorce. If you have already retained an attorney, CDFAs are a vital part of the team to make sure all the financial issues are addressed and resolved fairly and equitably by using financial fact. As a collaboratively trained Financial Neutral, I can also function as a team member in the Collaborative Practice.
I am a member of the North Shore Collaborative Divorce (https://northshorecollaborativedivorce.com), a group of family law attorneys and professional neutrals dedicated to helping you find an effective alternative to an adversarial divorce. My company is a Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) where I am licensed to offer comprehensive financial planning and investment advice for those clients seeking help transitioning to a successful post-divorce life.
My Professional Accomplishments
I recently finished a 3-year term as the Chair of the Board of Advisors for the Institute of Divorce Financial Analysts – IDFA https://institutedfa.com and am currently the Chair of the IDFA’s Public Awareness Task Force. I am an active member of the Massachusetts Collaborative Law Council (Co-chair of a local practice group) and was the past President of The Divorce Center Inc. a non-profit in Newton Massachusetts, from 2015-2017.
I also developed the widely-popular ‘Divorce Matters Next Step Workshop’ during my time as a Divorce Center Board Member prior to that. I’ve presented multiple workshops to both the public and other divorce professionals and spoke at my first national IDFA conference in Orlando in May 2017 and again in Nashville, May 2019. I have been a speaker for the MCLE – Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education multiple times and have presented to local Lawyer Bar Associations. In 2023, I was awarded the honor of being the recipient of the 2023 IDFA Lifetime Achievement Award for my outstanding work as a CDFA. “Using the financial planning discipline in helping clients during divorce. Representing the very best of CDFA® professionals.”
