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Edgar Degas, Etude de Ciel (Detail)
During the course of Laurie Israel’s work with clients, financial issues that include her clients’ views, beliefs and feelings about money frequently arise. Laurie helps individuals and couples gain a better understanding of the financial issues affecting them, and offers guidance to help them examine their attitudes towards money, and money and marriage.
Money and financial anxiety have a huge impact on most people, sometimes crowding out other thoughts, causing financial stress. This anxiety has the capability to even impair relationships. Money concerns and attitudes towards money, whether legitimate or not, can interfere with keeping harmony in family relationships, marriage, and friendships.
“Financial therapy”, “financial wellness”, “financial education”, “financial empowerment” and “financial psychology” are all relatively new terms in the financial industry. There are many types of professionals working in these areas helping guide clients who are dealing with such financial issues and concerns. Some of these professionals may have a psychology or clinical social work background, many are financial planners, and some are academics. All of these and others can provide help to clients as they work through issues around their financial well-being.
Laurie enters this field as a lawyer who has spent over 35 years helping to address the financial as well as legal issues of her clients. Laurie began her practice of law as a tax attorney, and through the years has also gained considerable experience in the areas of estate planning, divorce law, probate law and business law. Aside from her practice of law, she has been an active and skilled mediator since 1996, and a thought leader in the development of the fields of prenuptial agreement mediation and marital mediation.
Money, marriage, financial issues and struggles, as well as general anxiety around money, are often at the root of the issues that many of Laurie’s clients find themselves dealing with. Laurie has garnered a great sensitivity and understanding over the years in her ability to help clients address their concerns around their financial issues and gain financial confidence. She works as a consultant in this field in Massachusetts and nationwide. Laurie may be able to help you identify and navigate through your personal or marital financial concerns through mediation or by individual consulting sessions.
Here are some of the financial concerns that Laurie regularly helps her clients navigate in her consulting practice:
It is a good thing not to have to struggle to have enough money to pay for your everyday living expenses. But even people who have (or who will have) inherited significant amounts of money from their parents often have a different set of issues to deal with. Some of these may include feeling that they are (or are viewed) differently from other people, perhaps being seen or judged not by who they are but rather what they have. They may also struggle generally finding a purpose in life since they no longer need to be concerned with making a living. Inheritors can also bear the burden of having to maintain a level of privacy around their inheritance that may prevent them from engaging freely with people outside of their circle. Often great relief can be gained from just being able to talk about these issues with others.
Laurie is frequently called upon by wealthy parents to consult with them about how to share their wealth with their children without harming them. As you may suspect, this discussion often arises when one of their children is planning to marry. In this respect, the parents usually have received advice from their business attorneys, estate and financial planners that their children must have a prenuptial agreement in place before they marry. This leaves the parents somewhat conflicted. They are concerned about the effect a prenup, or even just broaching the subject of one might have on their relationship with their grown children, as well as with the new in-law family.
Laurie can lay out the pros and cons of prenups in their circumstances, and if one will be had, by suggesting possible provisions in a prenup or in their own estate plan that might enhance a couple’s future marital happiness. She can also suggest possible alternatives to asking a child to enter into a prenup. The consultation would help suggest the best possible approach to their child and his or her intended if a prenup is deemed warranted and appropriate. That discussion will include possible effects on the relationship between the child and his or her future spouse, the future spouse and his or her in-laws, and also on the inter-family relationships between the soon-to-be two blended families-of-origin. Methods of gifting assets by the parents to the child and his or her spouse during the marriage can also be discussed.
Some people wish to marry but keep putting it off due to worries about money or protecting their assets, and how it marriage (or a possible divorce) might affect that. They may have heard that roughly 50% of marriages end in divorce. (It might be a little less than that.) They might have heard that if they marry and then divorce, 50% of their premarital assets might have to be given to their spouse. (Not true.)
They may be in their 30s or 40s and have already established careers and have accumulated significant financial assets. Perhaps a close relationship they had in the past might have ended due to their delay in committing to marriage. Having a consultation on such issues, whether or not the person is now in a relationship that may be leading to marriage, can be a very fruitful first step.
If you find yourself in a relationship and are ready to move forward, having a consultation regarding financial issues together with your partner and a mediator can also be very helpful in reaching financial clarity. This understanding can contribute to a successful and long-lasting marriage.
Some of the potential issues to address may include navigating the wealth inequality of the couple, social class differences, family wealth inequality, and differences in career trajectories and earned income.
Laurie Israel is often called upon by clients to provide financial education and help clients gain financial literacy. In these sessions, she will explain the nature of certain assets and what exactly a person’s interests may be in more complex assets. Some of these assets or interests may include trusts and beneficial interests in them, limited liability companies (LLCs), different types of business partnerships and corporations, ongoing active businesses, and complex estate plans. The client might be a current or future beneficiary of complex family trusts, (many of them irrevocable), who can benefit greatly from understanding the implications and function of these trusts to see how they will impact their future financial situation.
Laurie Israel is very well versed in putting all of the complex financial jargon (currently in difficult-to-understand legalese) into plain English so that clients will have a better understanding of exactly what current assets mean to them, and what future interests they might have.
Oftentimes, a couple that is already married also wishes to obtain a more informed understanding of their current assets or the assets they may inherit in the future. Laurie can provide the explanations needed. One method she employs is to screen share documents (such as trusts) in real time allowing the clients to better obtain an understanding of their situation, thereby – helping them make better informed decisions regarding these interests and assets.
Laurie can also discuss estate plans proposed or suggested by attorneys, or other financial advisors so that her clients can benefit from a second set of eyes and a possible different approach.
Laurie Israel is often called upon by people entering into prenups and sometimes their parents to review and provide an assessment of prenuptial agreements that have been presented to them. Laurie can give the individual (or the individual and their family) an assessment of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the agreement in terms of either nurturing or detracting from the future marital financial health and can also help identify red flags which might interfere with their marital harmony later.
Laurie has been called upon, on a number of occasions, to provide guidance and advice to clients whose engagements actually ended prematurely due to a prenuptial agreement that was deemed unacceptable by one of the parties. In her capacity as a “neutral” observer as to the prenuptial agreement, Laurie will provide a thorough document review and provide feedback as to what terms might have caused the negative reception. She will then suggest what might be a better approach regarding the terms of the prenup if the future spouse who terminated the engagement reconsiders marrying, or if there arises another opportunity for this client to marry in the future.
Laurie is often called upon by people who are already married and who are experiencing money or financial issues that are making the marriage unhappy and a bit unbalanced. She can work as a consultant for one of the spouses or can work with both members of the couple through mediation. Speaking with a trained mediator about money matters has the very positive potential of providing great help to a couple experiencing the choppy waters of marital discord caused by money problems or financial issues.
Sometimes, one of the future spouses has little experience with or knowledge of the financial issues that may be germane to the terms of the prenup. Laurie Israel can work as a consultant to help that party understand the financial issues at stake and how the terms of the prenup could possibly impact that party.
This is done through educating that party to be able to understand the assets and interests involved, and how these could end up affecting their circumstances during the marriage and afterwards. An important part of the education process is to carefully review all applicable financial documents to make sure that Laurie’s client has a complete understanding of the assets and financial implications involved. With the help of Laurie’s guidance, the client will then be better prepared to make informed decisions and will achieve a greater level of financial empowerment.
Laurie Israel began her practice of law as a tax lawyer over 35 years ago. She is admitted to the bar in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is also admitted to practice in Federal courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States. She is a Martindale-Hubbell AV Preeminent Attorney®.
Over the years, her practice of estate planning and divorce led her to an interest and concentration in prenuptial agreements. She has become one of the preeminent national experts on prenuptial agreements, and has been a presenter to conferences on the topic of prenuptial agreements and mediating prenuptial agreements nationwide.
Laurie has written a comprehensive book on prenups, “The Generous Prenup: How to Support Your Marriage and Avoid the Pitfalls” (Amazon). This book was written with the laperson in mind, but is also used by attorneys and mediators as a comprehensive and fair-minded guide to this often thorny topic.
Laurie now confines her practice to prenuptial and postnuptial agreements. She helps people by mediating and consulting about prenups all over the country, as well as representing clients in Massachusetts.
To contact Laurie Israel, email her at laurie@laurieisrael.com, or use the contact page.