Clear Money Guide
Start with the tool
Open the inputs first, then use the guide outline to check assumptions and sources.
Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: the IRS reads one date — your marital status on December 31 decides your filing status for the whole year, so a decree on December 30 versus January 2 rewrites an entire year’s taxes. But the fork is not as binary as the articles say: the abandoned-spouse rule can hand you Head of Household while still legally married, and two COBRA clocks start at the decree regardless. Run your dates through both branches:
The calculator
The calendar is negotiable. Most people don’t know it’s on the table.
A divorce moves more money in one year than most people move in ten – QDRO splits, the house, support, withholding. The matching service below introduces you to advisers who pay to meet you.
Before you start, what actually happens. The form is run by Kapitalwise, our advisor-matching partner. Kapitalwise sends your details to advisers who pay for the introduction, so expect calls and texts. Clear Money Guide is paid when you submit the form, whether or not you ever hire anyone. This is free to you and there is no obligation to hire anyone.
The Kapitalwise form opens here — you stay on this page.
What happens when you press the button
It asks about nine questions — age, investable assets, location — then your name, email and phone number, and verifies the phone by text. Nothing loads and nothing reaches Kapitalwise until you press the button.
How to actually use the fork
Finalizing BEFORE year-end usually helps the lower earner (Head of Household beats Married Filing Separately decisively) and hurts the higher earner who loses joint brackets. That conflict is negotiable like everything else in a settlement — couples routinely trade the timing for something else, and the spouse for whom the calendar is worth real money should know it before signing. The rule itself, with its edge cases: filing status in the year of divorce.
The dates that do NOT wait for the decree: the 60-day COBRA notification clock, the beneficiary forms your ex is still on, and — if the house is in play — the §121 exclusion’s divorce rules. Dividing retirement money has its own trap: the QDRO penalty exception dies on rollover.