Whether you're combining finances or separating them, marriage and divorce both require careful financial planning. The decisions made in these moments tend to have consequences that last decades.
Most couples spend months planning the wedding and very little time planning the marriage — at least from a financial standpoint. That's understandable. But for clients with existing assets, business interests, or significant superannuation balances, getting married without addressing the financial administration is a costly oversight. Divorce is even more consequential, and the decisions made during that process can shape your financial position for decades.
Alastair Kennedy has worked with clients through both of these life events many times over. The consistent pattern he sees: the financial side is left too late in both cases. The conversations that should happen before a wedding often don't happen until a marriage breaks down. The goal at Ferncourt is to change that.
Getting married has real legal and financial consequences that take effect the moment you sign the register. Wills are invalidated under Australian law. Beneficiary nominations on superannuation and life insurance may no longer reflect your intentions. Estate plans structured around a former life become immediately misaligned with your new one.
For clients who come into a marriage with existing assets — an investment property, a business, accumulated super, or an inheritance — there are additional questions that deserve careful thought:
None of this diminishes the marriage. It protects it. Couples who have these conversations early tend to navigate financial decisions far more smoothly than those who avoid them.
A binding financial agreement — the Australian equivalent of a prenuptial agreement — is not about anticipating failure. For clients with significant pre-existing assets, a business with other shareholders, or complex family arrangements such as a blended family, a BFA is a sensible piece of planning that protects everyone's interests and reduces ambiguity if circumstances ever change.
This is particularly important where one partner brings substantially more wealth into the marriage, where there are children from a prior relationship whose inheritance interests need to be preserved, or where a business cannot easily be divided without causing serious operational disruption.
A BFA requires each party to obtain their own legal advice. Alastair works alongside family lawyers to ensure the financial planning dimension is properly addressed — not just the legal drafting. The structure of your assets, the treatment of superannuation, and the income arrangements going forward all need to align with the agreement, not just the document itself.
Divorce is one of the most financially complex events a person can go through, and it happens at precisely the moment when clear thinking is most difficult. Grief, anger, and exhaustion don't mix well with property settlements, tax consequences, and superannuation splitting orders. The decisions made during this period — often under pressure, often with incomplete information — can have consequences that last for the rest of your financial life.
The areas where we see clients most frequently disadvantaged:
One of the most valuable things a financial adviser does during divorce is not technical — it's attitudinal. The pressure to settle quickly, the desire to avoid further conflict, or the emotional pull toward keeping the family home regardless of whether it makes financial sense: these are all understandable human responses that can lead to genuinely poor financial outcomes.
Alastair's role is to sit alongside you as a calm, objective voice. Not to tell you what to do, but to make sure you understand the actual financial implications of what's being proposed — before you agree to it. That includes stress-testing scenarios, identifying what's being overlooked in a proposed settlement, and ensuring you're not trading long-term security for short-term resolution.
He works alongside your family lawyer, not in competition with them. Legal advice and financial advice address different dimensions of the same problem, and clients who engage both tend to reach better outcomes than those who rely on one alone.
Once the legal process is concluded, the real financial work begins. Many clients emerge from divorce with a substantially different balance sheet than the one they entered with. Either way, the priority is to build a financial plan that is grounded in your actual situation now, not what it was before.
That means revisiting your superannuation strategy, restructuring your investment approach if your risk profile or income has changed, updating your estate plan and all beneficiary nominations, reviewing your insurance coverage as a single person, and setting realistic short and medium-term goals.
Most clients who work through this process emerge with a sharper, clearer picture of their own financial position than they had during the marriage. Alastair has helped many clients do exactly this — and the outcome, when approached properly, is a financial plan that is genuinely theirs.
If you are approaching marriage and want to get the financial administration right from the outset, or navigating a separation and need a clear-eyed adviser in your corner, we'd welcome the conversation.
Book a Consultation with AlastairBook a no-obligation initial consultation — an honest conversation about where you are today and where you want to be.