wealthschema/archetypes/s-01-divorce-in-progress
S-01Special SituationsTransfermoderate tax complexity

Divorce in Progress

Individual going through divorce, QDRO, asset division, alimony, rebuilding single finances.

S-01 models the household mid-transition: a single balance sheet about to be cut in two, a QDRO pending, and a filing status that flips from MFJ to single in the middle of a tax year. It is the cleanest stress test for any product that assumes a household is one durable entity.

Age Range
35–55
Net Worth
$100k–$1M
Cohort
Special Situations

About this archetype

S-01 captures the household during the active separation window, not after the decree. The diagnostic complexity is not the eventual split — it is the in-between period when most software fails. A QDRO is drafted but not yet executed, so qualified-plan balances appear on one party's statement but are legally divisible. Health coverage flips to COBRA or marketplace mid-year, generating a 1095-A alongside a partial-year 1095-C. Filing status is genuinely ambiguous: same-sex or opposite-sex, the IRS rules on married-vs-single status depend on the decree date, not the separation date, and the household may file MFS, MFJ, or head-of-household depending on dependent allocation. The corpus is calibrated to surface exactly these mid-year, mid-decree edge cases.

Cash flow is dominated by legal fees, temporary support orders, and the cost of duplicating a household (two leases, two utility setups, two sets of furniture). The corpus shows mortgage debt on 14 of 20 households — a marital home that has not yet been sold or refinanced into one spouse's name. Liquid assets are higher than typical at this wealth tier ($337k median) because households tend to convert investments to cash anticipating settlement; investable assets sit at $553k median. Every household carries a Legal Settlement goal alongside Retirement and Emergency fund, which is the unique tri-goal signature of this archetype.

What makes S-01 distinct from H-04 (widowed spouse) or BL-01 (blended family) is the adversarial posture of the transition. H-04 inherits the full balance sheet; BL-01 has already remarried and merged. S-01 is uniquely in the act of splitting, with custody of beneficiary designations, joint accounts, and shared advisors still unresolved. The age range (35–55) and dependent rate (20%) further differentiate it from elder-divorce ('gray divorce') patterns that would show up in P-05 or R-01 households flagged for marital transition.

Defining characteristics

  • QDRO pending
    Qualified-plan division via QDRO is drafted or in negotiation for the majority of corpus households — retirement balances appear under one spouse but are subject to court-ordered split before settlement.
  • Asset division in progress
    All 20 households carry an active 'Legal Settlement' goal with a target amount, reflecting the working estimate of post-decree net worth after attorney fees and asset division.
  • Alimony / support flows
    Temporary support orders affect cash flow on roughly half the corpus; post-2018 alimony is not deductible to the payor or taxable to the payee, which changes the cash-flow math for divorces finalised after TCJA.
  • COBRA / marketplace transition
    Health coverage typically lapses from a single employer-sponsored plan to one COBRA election plus one new ACA marketplace plan, generating split-year 1095 forms that tax software often mis-handles.
  • Credit rebuilding
    Every corpus household carries credit-card balances post-separation; joint cards are typically closed and individual cards opened, producing thin recent-history credit files for the non-primary spouse.
  • Single filing status
    All 20 records file single, not MFS — the corpus models the post-separation phase where the household is one adult plus zero or one dependents, not the negotiation phase.

Corpus signature

n = 20 households

Aggregated across the 20 S-01 households in the shipped v3 corpus corpus. Numbers describe the corpus, not population claims.

Median income
$161k
p25–p75 $144k–$175k
Median net worth
$944k
mean $916k
Liquid net worth
$337k
median
Investable assets
$553k
median
Income distribution
$125k–150k
6
$150k–175k
8
$175k–200k
4
$200k–225k
2
Net-worth distribution
$325k–575k
1
$575k–825k
6
$825k–1.1m
9
$1.1m–1.3m
4
Goals across the corpus
Retirement20 / 20
Emergency fund20 / 20
Legal Settlement20 / 20
Liability composition
Credit cards20 / 20
Mortgages14 / 20
Student loans9 / 20
Auto loans5 / 20
  • 14 of 20 (70%) are homeowners; the remainder rent.
  • CA, MA, MO account for 6 of 20 households — 30% of the corpus.
  • Median adult-member age is 44 (range 35–52 across primaries and spouses).
  • 4 of 20 (20%) carry one or more dependents.
  • Single is the dominant filing status (20 of 20).

Representative household

S-01-seed-1
Robert C.Single Parent·New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY

Robert sits near the upper end of the S-01 net-worth distribution, with $689k liquid and unusually low total liabilities of $4,065 — the marital mortgage has likely already been refinanced or transferred. The diagnostic pattern is the goal split: emergency fund on track, retirement and the $35,000 legal-settlement target both off track. This is the household where a wealth platform's 'one household, one statement' assumption breaks at the QDRO step.

Gross income
$161,036
Net worth
$1,275,347
Liquid NW
$688,612
Age
48
Top goals on this household
Retirement
$2,925,000
Emergency fund
$58,500
Legal Settlement
$35,000

Schema fields covered

Every S-01 household ships with — at minimum — these JSON fields populated. The full schema is documented in the data set you purchase.

members[].age
income.combined_gross
net_worth.total
filing_status
longitudinal.monthly[].net_cash_flow
longitudinal.monthly[].savings_rate
stress.scenarios[]
liquidity.months_of_expenses

Who builds against this archetype

Three buyer profiles draw on S-01 heavily. Wealth-platform engineering teams use it to validate account-splitting, beneficiary-update, and dual-advisor-relationship flows — the workflows where a single 'household' record needs to become two. Tax-software teams test mid-year filing-status changes, post-TCJA alimony treatment, and dependent-allocation tiebreakers under §152(e). Compliance teams at RIAs and broker-dealers use it to populate divorce-related Reg BI rollover scenarios, QDRO acceptance workflows, and account-restraining-order edge cases. CFP firms targeting CDFA-credentialed planners also test client-onboarding flows for prospects who arrive mid-decree.

Testing scenarios this corpus is calibrated for

  • 01QDRO drafting and acceptance workflow testing — qualified-plan division mid-year, before the decree, against retirement balances on the corpus median ($553k investable).
  • 02Filing-status transition testing in tax software: a return that begins as MFJ in January and ends as single or head-of-household in December.
  • 03Beneficiary update flow regression — life insurance, IRAs, 401(k), and TOD designations all needing post-separation re-papering.
  • 04Marital-home disposition modeling: 14 of 20 households retain mortgages mid-divorce; test refinance, buyout, and sale-and-split branches.
  • 05Account-restraining-order (ARO) and joint-account-freeze edge cases in custodial systems where one spouse files an emergency motion.
  • 06Health-coverage gap modeling: COBRA election against ACA marketplace pricing with mid-year APTC reconciliation.

Edge cases and what's not in this corpus

S-01 deliberately excludes the post-decree, single-with-rebuilt-finances state — once the QDRO is executed and the household has stabilised, the profile moves to A-02 (single parent) or H-04 (widowed/single HNW depending on tier). The corpus also excludes high-conflict UHNW divorces with offshore assets, marital QPRTs, or business-interest valuation disputes; those edge cases live closer to H-02 or P-02 with a 'transition' overlay. Same-sex divorces in non-recognition states pre-Obergefell are not modeled — all 20 households assume federal recognition. Finally, gray divorces over 60 with pension-split-vs-Social-Security-spousal-benefit interactions are not in S-01; the closer fit is R-01 or R-03 households flagged as transition cases.

Calibration notes

Income bands and homeownership rates were anchored during v3 synthesis to the upper end of mass-affluent profiles in the Survey of Consumer Finances, with the divorce-specific cash-flow shape informed by AAML practitioner surveys and Census ACS data on separated-not-divorced filers. The Legal Settlement goal target is a synthesized prior rather than a published quantile — it represents working-estimate net asset division, not an actual SCF figure. Per CLAUDE.md §9, the v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable; calibration claims here are descriptive of the synthesis intent and not auditable to a published methodology.

How this differs from related archetypes

Frequently asked questions

What does the S-01 archetype represent?+

S-01 — Divorce in Progress represents the household during active separation and divorce proceedings, before the decree is finalised. The corpus models the mid-transition state: QDRO drafted but not executed, filing status ambiguous, COBRA in play, and a single legal-settlement goal alongside the usual retirement and emergency-fund goals.

Why does every S-01 household have a 'Legal Settlement' goal?+

Because that goal is the archetype's defining structural feature. The Legal Settlement target represents the working estimate of attorney fees plus post-decree asset division, and it appears on all 20 corpus records as a way to flag the household as in-transition rather than stabilised.

How does S-01 differ from H-04 (widowed HNW spouse)?+

Both are single-after-transition, but H-04 inherits the full marital balance sheet via survivor rules and steps up basis on inherited assets, while S-01 splits the balance sheet under a QDRO with no basis step-up and an adversarial counterparty. The tax, beneficiary, and advisor-transition workflows are completely different.

Is alimony taxable in the S-01 corpus?+

Households model the post-TCJA regime where alimony from divorces finalised after January 1, 2019 is neither deductible to the payor nor taxable to the payee. Tax-software teams testing pre-TCJA-decree edge cases should layer that on as a stress overlay rather than expect it natively.

Which synthetic wealth data sets include S-01 households?+

S-01 is tagged for six bundles — B04, B14, B18, B22, B27, and B30 — covering cash-flow stress, behavioral finance, insurance transitions, compliance edge cases, life-event triggers, and underserved/transitional household coverage.

Is the S-01 corpus regenerable?+

No. The shipped v3 corpus is frozen and not regenerable from current code (CLAUDE.md §9). Sampler improvements land in a future v4 release with per-archetype golden fixtures in CI to prevent silent drift.

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