f you're divorced, money probably had something to do with it.

Money is the number one cause of divorce in the United States. This time around, be smart and do things right financially, before you get your marriage license. If you're already married, you should still take most of these steps so that you don't make the same mistakes twice and that you avoid new ones. Finally, to be realistic, you need to protect your assets because your new marriage, like all marriages, could end in either divorce or death.

Your first step in getting your financial affairs in order is to get financial counseling. You may have thought that your first stop should be at the attorney's office, but you actually need to go to a good financial planner first. Your lawyer needs the numbers and results of your financial consultation to advise you about wills, trusts and prenuptial agreements based on your particular situation.

There are a number of important benefits to obtaining financial advice. You're baring your financial soul to your future mate. The presence of a third-party professional actually can help this process by serving as a type of mediator, or moderator. Don't forget that each of you already has established saving and spending habits. And they're not going to be the same. Now you have to think about how you're going to coordinate your financial habits and attitudes with your spouse's.

The most critical issue - because it involves power as much as money - is whether your money should be kept separate or combined. Usually the best solution is to have three checking accounts. All paychecks are deposited into one joint account, from which all regular bills are paid. Then, each spouse writes a check for an agreed-upon weekly or monthly allowance that is deposited into his or her separate account. Each spouse can do whatever he or she wants with that money without having to be accountable to the other spouse for a single penny. This type of system cuts through a lot of the friction - and marital fights - that afflict many couples. If part of that monthly allowance is used for savings or investing, the savings or investment account belongs to the spouse who contributed the money.

Your financial situation will change because you'll be living and sharing expenses with another person. A key piece to keeping financial harmony in the family is to set a budget for all of the items that are to be paid out of the joint account, as well as to decide how much allowance each partner should get. Your financial planner can help you agree on a budget, and then if one spouse wants to exceed it, the individual's allowance is used. For example, if you've already exceeded your restaurant budget for the month, but you had a hard week and really want to go out to dinner, you'd cover it out of your personal account.

Your financial planner can help you decide who should be the beneficiary of your various retirement plans and life insurance policies. (For tax reasons, it's typically best to name your spouse as beneficiary of the retirement plans.) The best way to figure this out is to have your financial planner prepare a capital needs analysis, with various scenarios. This is especially true if you have children from a previous marriage. You need to protect your assets so that, in the event of your death, your spouse's children do not get assets that you intended for your own kids. You'll probably need more life insurance because you now have at least one other person for whom you are financially responsible. If you have children and you plan to own or buy a home jointly with your spouse, your spouse should buy enough insurance to pay for your portion of the mortgage so that your children will get your share of the house's value.

Finally, your financial planner can help you obtain credit reports on each other and review them. You can of course get your credit report on your own, but if your report has a few surprises - or you suspect that your fiancΘ's does - it helps to have a third party interpret the results and tell you what really matters. This is a decidedly unromantic thing to do, but in today's world it is an absolute necessity. Too many honeymoon memories (and marriages) have been ruined when the first credit card bill arrives and the trip that one spouse thought was paid for actually was on an already maxed-out credit card. This happens more often than you might imagine.

Once you have the numbers in order, it's time to see an attorney. You want to make sure that you properly protect yourself, your children and your dependent parents in the event of divorce or death. Your attorney can help you set up an estate plan using wills, trusts and other documents to protect your assets. The lawyer can also help prepare a prenuptial agreement that not only protects the assets you bring into the marriage, but can regulate assets acquired during the marriage.

Prenuptials can turn contentious. That depends on the couple and how well prepared they are for the negotiations. Each of you should have your own attorney, and let the attorneys do the negotiating. They can then come back to you for agreement, compromise or disagreement. You never have to have a discussion directly with your fiancΘ about a prenuptial agreement. In fact, many attorneys recommend that the agreement be signed by each of you in separate meetings so that you don't have to see each other.

You also might need to talk with a psychologist about how each of you deal with money. Two people who have very different money styles might need to discuss those differences and come to terms with each other's priorities.

After these steps have been accomplished, it is important to talk about money with your children. A great deal of resentment, distress and tension arises in blended families around the issue of money.

Children might think their stepfather will get his hands on money that doesn't belong to him, or that their new stepmother is only marrying their father because of money. Children's imaginations are unlimited, and they may be imagining all sorts of things, from worrying that their allowance will go down to worrying about their inheritance. Reassure them that in the event of divorce or death that they will be taken care of financially.

Not doing these admittedly unromantic things could cost you more than money. It could cost you another marriage.