How to separate out accounts in a divorce

Marqule

Due to divorce, I need to separate my accounts in quicken and make them available only to me. How do I do this? Right now, my husband's accounts and my accounts are all in one instance of quicken. He can see all of mine and I can see all of his. This has to change but I don't know how to get my own quicken and move all of my accounts there. If I have placed this in the wrong category (there wasn't a natural fit) please feel free to suggest another one which might be better suited to answer. I am sure I am not the first person to have this issue but I can't find any answers on the community site. Thank you!!

Jon

First you should change the passwords on your bank accounts so your ex can't continue to download the activity in those accounts to his Quicken file. You can't remove past activity from his Quicken file but you can at least stop any further updates.

You can buy your own subscription to Quicken from quicken.com. Once you have that, I think you should be able to open your existing Quicken file using that.

At that point you have to make a decision. Do you want to try to continue working with the old Quicken file, or do you just want to start fresh with a new file that doesn't have any past references to your ex-husband's finances? Deleting your husbands accounts from your Quicken file is likely to cause a mess, with lots of transfers suddenly going nowhere, but you could hide those accounts so they're no longer displayed in your sidebar. Or you could create a new file for your finances going forward & keep the old file around in case you need to reference it. Neither way is inherently better than the other, it's just whatever suits you best.

Marqule

OMG! Such a generous answer! Thank you for thinking through this for me. There is so much going on that I haven't had a chance to learn what to do and you made it so easy. I am going to change the passwords right now and then start a new quicken altogether. The past is the past, so he can do with that as he pleases, but nothing new will be visible and that's the best news ever. Thank you again!!!!

Jon

I am not a lawyer, but one thing I should probably add. When you talked about "your accounts", I assumed you meant accounts that were in your name only. If you have joint accounts with your husband, you probably don't want to change the passwords on those since they're aren't exclusively yours. And in any case, you should check with your lawyer first in case there's a reason not to change your passwords yet.

jacobs

It's a little tricky, but it can be done. First, let me say I'm sorry for this difficult process you're going through. Second, I'll suggest that before deleting any data from the file/computer which will remain with your husband, you may want to double-check with your lawyer to make sure there isn't anything you're obligated to preserve.

To start this process, one of you will want to create a new Quicken ID and purchase your own subscription to Quicken using that ID. If you have a separate computer, create the account on that computer, so your login isn't accidentally memorized on your husband's computer. There are a few ways you could duplicate and separate your data, but you have to be careful not to have the files tied together in any way on your computer or in Quicken's cloud services. So I'm going to suggest an approach that insures your data is fully separated and not visible to the other person. (I'll describe this as if you're the one moving to a new computer and creating the new file for you, but you could reverse this if you keep the original file and make a duplicate for your husband.)

Before anything make a copy of your existing data file, just in case anything goes wrong and you need to start over. Then you'll start by exporting the current data to a Quicken Transfer File by going to File > Export > Quicken Transfer File (QXF). (Note that a ".qxf" file is different than a transaction download file, which is a ".qfx".) Move that .qxf file to your computer (via Airdrop, file sharing, flash drive, or even email). On your computer, launch Quicken, log in, and it should bring you to a Let's Get Started page. Click Start from Scratch. It will ask you to create your first account, but you can cancel that, and go to File > Import > Quicken Windows File (QDF, QXF). This import will import all your transactions into the next Quicken file. It will not bring with it your preferences/settings, your saved reports, any attachments, and the login information for accounts you download from financial institutions. Spend a little time looking at your data in Quicken to make sure everything seems correct and complete.

Now that you have two complete but independent versions of you data, it's time to start pruning. I recommend writing down the balances of each account, in case something gets messed up along the way. On your data file, you can delete your husband's accounts, so that all you have remaining are your accounts that you wish to have going forward and for historical purposes. (To delete an account, Control-click it in the sidebar, and select Delete from the pop-up menu.) Verify that account balances look correct.

You will have to re-create your logins for your accounts set up for downloading. In each account, click Settings, click on the Downloads tab, and follow the prompts to identify your financial institution and enter your login credentials. Usually, Quicken will then ask if you want to create a new account or link to an existing account, and you should select link to the correct existing account. It is possible that you may get duplicate transactions from the past 90 days in the initial download from each financial institution, and you'll need to go through to eliminate the duplicates, until you get the current balance back to where it was in the original data file. After configuring each account, you should now look at your Quicken data file and feel like it is a complete version of the data you wanted to preserve and have for the future.

Now go to your husband's computer and do the same thing you did above, deleting your accounts that he shouldn't have access to going forward. Deleting those accounts will remove all the transactions they contained. Any Payees which are completely eliminated will also disappear from the Payee list. But if there are any Renaming Rules or QuickFill Rules for those deleted Payees, they will remain. That's probably inconsequential, but you may want to look at Window > Payees & Rules to see if you want to delete any of the Renaming or QuickFill rules. It's probably a good idea to re-generate the Quicken Cloud data associated with this original file, so there's no trace of your transactions or account logins (if Sync was turned on) remaining in the associated Cloud file: go to Settings > Connected Services and click Reset. Note that if your husband uses the mobile app or web interface, and therefore has Sync turned on (in Settings > Mobile, Web & Alerts), this will delete the existing data and re-create a new cloud file with only the last two years of data for the remaining accounts. For most people, this is fine, but I'm just noting it in case that could be a problem area. At this point, your husband's computer should be purged of your accounts and the data from them.

If your accounts were setup for downloading from your financial institutions, you'll also want to remove those login parameters from his computer. Use Spotlight (the little magnifying glass icon on the upper right of your Mac's menu bar) to fined and open Keychain Access utility. Search for Quicken. Look for entries for passwords for your personal accounts. They will look something like:

Quicken password for customer [login name] at [financial institution]

Delete the ones which you can determine are for your accounts. (Separate from Quicken, if you log into financial institution websites, and store your login credentials on the Mac and in iCloud, you may also want to purge those. In Safari or Chrome, go to the saved passwords and delete anything that's a login for a personal account of yours.) A possibly thorny issue is file backups. The existing backups Quicken creates contain your accounts and your login credentials, so you're likely going to want to get rid of those, too. But that leaves you both without backups, which could create a problem. My suggestion from a practical (but not legal) standpoint would be to create the two separated files as described, and use them each for a week or two to build up new backups, and then go back to delete any older Quicken backups which may exist in your Quicken Backup folder on the old computer. (Let me also note that if you have any computer backup services running on the computer, such as Apple's Time Machine or cloud based backup like iDrive, then there's the issue that your old Quicken data files exist in those locations and you may want to cleanse those, too. That goes beyond the scope of what I'm going to talk about here, but I just wanted to raise the issue. You'll want to be on sound legal and technical grounds before diving into selectively purging data from such backup services.)

I hope any other Quicken veterans will jump in here to correct anything I might have wrong, or to add any additional points for your to consider.

Best wishes!

Marqule

Holy smokes. This is amazing. I have never had such in depth help from anyone before. You're incredible and I am so, so grateful for your help. Leaving an abusive marriage is tough, but this is going to help me get myself set up for success moving forward. Whatever crown is awaiting you in heaven just got a new jewel on it. Blessings, Leslie. (I have a lot to do thanks to you!)

Jon

First you should change the passwords on your bank accounts so your ex can't continue to download the activity in those accounts to his Quicken file. You can't remove past activity from his Quicken file but you can at least stop any further updates.

You can buy your own subscription to Quicken from quicken.com. Once you have that, I think you should be able to open your existing Quicken file using that.

At that point you have to make a decision. Do you want to try to continue working with the old Quicken file, or do you just want to start fresh with a new file that doesn't have any past references to your ex-husband's finances? Deleting your husbands accounts from your Quicken file is likely to cause a mess, with lots of transfers suddenly going nowhere, but you could hide those accounts so they're no longer displayed in your sidebar. Or you could create a new file for your finances going forward & keep the old file around in case you need to reference it. Neither way is inherently better than the other, it's just whatever suits you best.

Marqule

OMG! Such a generous answer! Thank you for thinking through this for me. There is so much going on that I haven't had a chance to learn what to do and you made it so easy. I am going to change the passwords right now and then start a new quicken altogether. The past is the past, so he can do with that as he pleases, but nothing new will be visible and that's the best news ever. Thank you again!!!!

Jon

I am not a lawyer, but one thing I should probably add. When you talked about "your accounts", I assumed you meant accounts that were in your name only. If you have joint accounts with your husband, you probably don't want to change the passwords on those since they're aren't exclusively yours. And in any case, you should check with your lawyer first in case there's a reason not to change your passwords yet.

Marqule

Yes, these are just mine. :-)

jacobs

It's a little tricky, but it can be done. First, let me say I'm sorry for this difficult process you're going through. Second, I'll suggest that before deleting any data from the file/computer which will remain with your husband, you may want to double-check with your lawyer to make sure there isn't anything you're obligated to preserve.

To start this process, one of you will want to create a new Quicken ID and purchase your own subscription to Quicken using that ID. If you have a separate computer, create the account on that computer, so your login isn't accidentally memorized on your husband's computer. There are a few ways you could duplicate and separate your data, but you have to be careful not to have the files tied together in any way on your computer or in Quicken's cloud services. So I'm going to suggest an approach that insures your data is fully separated and not visible to the other person. (I'll describe this as if you're the one moving to a new computer and creating the new file for you, but you could reverse this if you keep the original file and make a duplicate for your husband.)

Before anything make a copy of your existing data file, just in case anything goes wrong and you need to start over. Then you'll start by exporting the current data to a Quicken Transfer File by going to File > Export > Quicken Transfer File (QXF). (Note that a ".qxf" file is different than a transaction download file, which is a ".qfx".) Move that .qxf file to your computer (via Airdrop, file sharing, flash drive, or even email). On your computer, launch Quicken, log in, and it should bring you to a Let's Get Started page. Click Start from Scratch. It will ask you to create your first account, but you can cancel that, and go to File > Import > Quicken Windows File (QDF, QXF). This import will import all your transactions into the next Quicken file. It will not bring with it your preferences/settings, your saved reports, any attachments, and the login information for accounts you download from financial institutions. Spend a little time looking at your data in Quicken to make sure everything seems correct and complete.

Now that you have two complete but independent versions of you data, it's time to start pruning. I recommend writing down the balances of each account, in case something gets messed up along the way. On your data file, you can delete your husband's accounts, so that all you have remaining are your accounts that you wish to have going forward and for historical purposes. (To delete an account, Control-click it in the sidebar, and select Delete from the pop-up menu.) Verify that account balances look correct.

You will have to re-create your logins for your accounts set up for downloading. In each account, click Settings, click on the Downloads tab, and follow the prompts to identify your financial institution and enter your login credentials. Usually, Quicken will then ask if you want to create a new account or link to an existing account, and you should select link to the correct existing account. It is possible that you may get duplicate transactions from the past 90 days in the initial download from each financial institution, and you'll need to go through to eliminate the duplicates, until you get the current balance back to where it was in the original data file. After configuring each account, you should now look at your Quicken data file and feel like it is a complete version of the data you wanted to preserve and have for the future.

Now go to your husband's computer and do the same thing you did above, deleting your accounts that he shouldn't have access to going forward. Deleting those accounts will remove all the transactions they contained. Any Payees which are completely eliminated will also disappear from the Payee list. But if there are any Renaming Rules or QuickFill Rules for those deleted Payees, they will remain. That's probably inconsequential, but you may want to look at Window > Payees & Rules to see if you want to delete any of the Renaming or QuickFill rules. It's probably a good idea to re-generate the Quicken Cloud data associated with this original file, so there's no trace of your transactions or account logins (if Sync was turned on) remaining in the associated Cloud file: go to Settings > Connected Services and click Reset. Note that if your husband uses the mobile app or web interface, and therefore has Sync turned on (in Settings > Mobile, Web & Alerts), this will delete the existing data and re-create a new cloud file with only the last two years of data for the remaining accounts. For most people, this is fine, but I'm just noting it in case that could be a problem area. At this point, your husband's computer should be purged of your accounts and the data from them.

If your accounts were setup for downloading from your financial institutions, you'll also want to remove those login parameters from his computer. Use Spotlight (the little magnifying glass icon on the upper right of your Mac's menu bar) to fined and open Keychain Access utility. Search for Quicken. Look for entries for passwords for your personal accounts. They will look something like:

Quicken password for customer [login name] at [financial institution]

Delete the ones which you can determine are for your accounts. (Separate from Quicken, if you log into financial institution websites, and store your login credentials on the Mac and in iCloud, you may also want to purge those. In Safari or Chrome, go to the saved passwords and delete anything that's a login for a personal account of yours.) A possibly thorny issue is file backups. The existing backups Quicken creates contain your accounts and your login credentials, so you're likely going to want to get rid of those, too. But that leaves you both without backups, which could create a problem. My suggestion from a practical (but not legal) standpoint would be to create the two separated files as described, and use them each for a week or two to build up new backups, and then go back to delete any older Quicken backups which may exist in your Quicken Backup folder on the old computer. (Let me also note that if you have any computer backup services running on the computer, such as Apple's Time Machine or cloud based backup like iDrive, then there's the issue that your old Quicken data files exist in those locations and you may want to cleanse those, too. That goes beyond the scope of what I'm going to talk about here, but I just wanted to raise the issue. You'll want to be on sound legal and technical grounds before diving into selectively purging data from such backup services.)

I hope any other Quicken veterans will jump in here to correct anything I might have wrong, or to add any additional points for your to consider.

Best wishes!

Marqule

Holy smokes. This is amazing. I have never had such in depth help from anyone before. You're incredible and I am so, so grateful for your help. Leaving an abusive marriage is tough, but this is going to help me get myself set up for success moving forward. Whatever crown is awaiting you in heaven just got a new jewel on it. Blessings, Leslie. (I have a lot to do thanks to you!)