Personal Finance Advice

While this is usually not the place where you would come for information on stars the likes of Britney Spears (but hey, it’s not often a personal finance blogger like me finds an excuse to legitimately place a photo of Britney Spears in their blog - or even write about her ), I found it interesting what some legal analysts are saying about the timing of her divorce filing.

It appears that Britney Spears filed for divorce from Kevin Federline on November 6 in order to avoid having to pay him an extra year of money in their divorce settlement. Legal analysts are noting that Britney filed the divorce papers at Los Angeles Superior Court exactly two years and one month from the time when they were officially married on October 6, 2004.

The rumor is that the pre-nuptial agreement that the two signed specified that Kevin Federline would receive increased payouts for every year of their marriage. While the two have actually been married for 2 years and 1 month, most pre-nuptial agreements of this type have a 30-day grace period. That means that November 6 would have been Spears’ last chance to get out of paying half her income on the third year of their marriage (by filing on November 6, he can now only claim half of Spears’ earnings during the first two years and not the third year).

I’m not sure financial reasons should be the determining factor on when you file for divorce, but then again, if financial reasons are behind the decision to get divorced, then the divorce was probably inevitable anyway…