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CAROL ANN WINS PIONEERING AWARD

Local entrepreneur Carol Ann Wilson has been awarded the prestigious Pioneering Award by the Association of Divorce Financial Planners (AFDP). The Pioneering Award honors individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the field of divorce. In 1993, Wilson founded the profession of Financial Divorce Professionals, specialists who are trained in the financial issues surrounding divorce and who work with divorcing clients and their attorneys to achieve fair and equitable divorce settlements.

Wilson began developing the profession with her training as a Certified Financial Planner. In 1985, she started working primarily with divorcing clients and discovered that determining how to divide assets in divorce was a serious problem. Divorce attorneys tend to be unaware of the many tax laws and loopholes that financial planners used to help clients, and judges rely only on the evidence presented by attorneys. No one was accurately analyzing the financial situation of the divorcing couple, and often divorces resulted in financial disaster for one or both of the parties involved.

Wilson discovered that, by working with a divorcing client and their attorney, she could help them achieve a more equitable agreement that took into account long-term financial consequences. Not only did this make clients happy, but attorneys and judges welcomed the expert help as well.

By 1993, she had become the nation's foremost expert on divorce financial issues. She developed certification programs and educational institutes to provide training and credentials for other financial planners to gain divorce expertise. Wilson has since trained thousands of attorneys, CPA's and financial planners in the field of divorce and long-range settlement forecasting. She is often asked to serve as an expert witness in court, having testified in over 120 divorce cases nationwide.

While Wilson was the first to pioneer the field of divorce financial planning, she now has former students helping divorcing clients all over the country. Many of her protégés were present when she accepted the Pioneering Award at the Association of Divorce Financial Planners (AFDP) Annual Conference on September 11, 2008 in New York City.

Wilson's dedication to helping couples financially survive their divorce has driven her to continuously develop more tools to help them. Wilson has authored and co-authored several books including 40 Tips For Surviving Your Divorce, Survival Manual to Divorce, Survival Manual for Men in Divorce, Survival Manual for Women in Divorce, Dollars and Sense of Divorce, and ABC's of Divorce for Women.

Currently, Wilson is the president of the Financial Divorce Association, located in Longmont, Colorado, and an owner of the Academy of Financial Divorce Practitioners in Chicago. Her expertise, as the founder of the profession, is highly sought-after, and Wilson continues to consult with divorcing clients today.

In 2007, Wilson pioneered a new niche in the field of divorce for real estate professionals who work with divorcing clients. The Real Estate Divorce Specialist Certification Program trains real estate professionals in legal and tax aspects of divorce as it relates to the division of real estate so they can help their clients avoid pitfalls common in divorce. Like her Financial Divorce Professional training, she expects the Real Estate Divorce Specialist program to spread nationwide through live seminars and a self-study course that she is developing.

About receiving the Pioneering Award, Wilson says, "After hearing so many tragic stories from women in my office after their divorce was final, I saw that there was a desperate need for them to have financial consulting before their divorce. I'm thrilled and honored to be recognized for my contributions to this field."

Read more about the award on the AFDP Website.