By Brette Sember
Crowdfunding is great for starting a business or for soliciting
charitable donations, but how about paying for your divorce? Plumfund, a site that offers
crowdfunding for just about anything you can imagine, has added a divorce registry. If you’re getting a divorce, you can go there and
create a registry of things you need (your ex took the couch, so you need a new
one), ask for help with living expenses (you can’t afford the mortgage or rent
on your income alone), or request assistance with the costs of your unhitching
(your attorney’s fees, for example). The divorce registry works like any other
crowdfunding site, allowing anyone to donate, with Plumfund taking a small fee.
Crowdfunding
grows in popularity
Plumfund isn’t the only site
capitalizing on divorces. Dedicating Dollars or Funded Justice for example, have also
created divorce-funding pages. It’s no surprise sites are willing to try
divorce funding since popularity has been growing for other types of
donation-based appeals—over$5.5 billion was raised in that
category in 2015 alone. How much of a market there really is, however, remains
to be seen—giving to charitable causes and helping someone pay for a divorce
lawyer are rather different things, after all.
Ways to pay for
a divorce
Paying for a divorce can be a
challenge. An Avvo study in 2013 revealed the
average cost of a divorce (just for the legal fees and court costs) was
$15,000. Add in the expenses of moving and replacing household items, the
income lost while attending court, and ongoing child support or alimony
payments, and the price of divorce skyrockets. Faced with these towering costs,
many people drain their savings, borrow from family or friends, work out an
installment plan with their lawyer, or borrow against their 401(k).
All of those options can
simply dig the financial hole even deeper in the long run, creating a load of
debt or an underfunded retirement. Crowdfunding solves the problem – in theory,
anyway – by giving you essentially free money. The donations are given as a
gift: there are no strings attached and no debt incurred.
How to
successfully crowdfund your divorce
There’s an art to
crowdfunding. For starters, your appeal has to resonate with people. This means you’ve got to share some of the dirty
details of your divorce, and you most likely need to paint yourself as the
victim. The most successful crowdfunding appeals include videos, so you will want to take the
time to create one that is good quality and in which you speak from the heart.
Manipulative though it may be, you’re more likely to get donations if you can
make viewers feel guilty about how good their family lives are while you are
going through this awful divorce.
And remember, you’re asking
people for money, so they’ll want to know why you need it: provide details about
your financial situation and explain how you are going to use the money. Also,
you can’t just put up your appeal and walk away. You need to actively promote
it by updating your progress and thanking each donor, and by asking your social
media friends to tell your story and provide links to your crowdfunding
campaign.
Crowdfunding risks
Free money sounds good, but
crowdfunding your divorce isn’t without potential downsides. Any time you put
anything online about your divorce, it’s a safe bet that your ex is going to
see it and it may get brought up in court. So don’t say anything that could
hurt your case. In particular, you should be careful about shielding your
children and avoid making them players in your crowdfunding, at least by name
or image.
Another concern with
crowdfunding is that you are required to provide complete financial disclosure
to the court and to your soon-to-be-ex spouse. Consequently, you’ll have to
include any crowdfunded donations you receive while the divorce is in progress,
which could affect your percentage of the marital financial settlement. Even if
you wait to put your campaign up after the divorce is final it could still
increase your income and therefore impact any child support calculations.
Crowdfunding offers a novel
way to ease the financial burden of divorce, but if you choose to pursue it, do
it carefully and strategically.
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