About Dominique Bergel-Grant

Having been divorced myself, and witnessed my mother fight my father for almost 20 years in Australian Family Law Courts my mission is to help individuals and couples navigate divorce with a focus on minimising harm.

Over the years as a qualified Financial Adviser and my time as a CDC Certified Divorce Coach®, I have had the opportunity to help many individuals, as well as couples, deal with the emotional upheaval of divorce, navigate financial settlements, build child centred co-parenting plans and a plan for the individuals and the family unit as a whole to move forward with clarity and certainty. 

Navigate Your Divorce is about turning my Mother's painful divorce story into a positive impact.

My role is to help clients find opportunities in divorce, rebuild self-confidence and redesign their lives exactly the way they want, and most importantly deserve.

We all start somewhere

I went from overworked employee to starting my own financial advice practice back in 2011. I often got asked why financial advice? For me, this became an incredibly personal question. To understand why here is my story...

My mother was an amazing woman, a Doctor with a very busy practice in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. Born in 1940 being a doctor was not the norm and I always admired her for pushing through. I am also incredibly grateful to my grandparents that they held my Mother to the same education standards as her older brother, who by that time was a qualified Doctor.

She had started to build a lifestyle that she defined success by. She had a farm, her home in Sydney along with a range of different investment properties. She was, without doubt, doing well for herself.

Just before she turned 40 she got married, and I was born shortly afterwards. The reality of marriage, however, was not one of a fairy tale; instead, it was one of deception and lies. 

During the marriage, my Mother continued to try to build a lifestyle by purchasing a property in London, Los Angeles, and Barcelona. Her dream was to be able to travel freely and benefit from years of hard work.

Two years after I was born, my Father disappeared back to Argentina. However, he kept in contact to ask for money. As often is the case with love, she not only helped him with money but went on to set him up in a gemstone business to encourage him back to Australia. He took up the option, perhaps all too eagerly. 

To support this new fledgling business she went on to sell all of her investment properties around Sydney's inner suburb of Glebe. This money was used to buy gemstones in the business. Less than two years later he left the country, never to return again along with all the gemstones. At the time Australia did not have an extradition treaty with Spain which was his newly chosen home.

So then started a long and lengthy family law court case. My Father however was not willing to wait for the result. He went on to strip the house in Barcelona of all its furniture, and illegally sold the property in Los Angeles; his new partner signed the sale documents pretending to be my Mother. A few years later he then went on to sell the Barcelona property again illegally. The one property that remained was the London house.

The years and years of fighting a ghost in the family law court took a toll on my Mother. My Father was unable to be contacted for over 10 years putting a total pause on formal legal actions. In the mean time my Mother had made the decision to keep fighting him with all that she had. She gave up her medical practice and put all her energy into the fight.

She protected me by sending me to boarding school in the United Kingdom, which gave me safety and regularity. However, the downside of this is that it also gave her more time to focus on the fight.

As a child, there was little I could do. However, having witnessed this it just makes me wish there was someone there to tell my mother to stop the fight. In the end, the court case finished in 2003, having started in 1986. The property settlement was confirmed in my mother's favour. However, by this time there was only the London property left. The delay in years had left the London property in a state of disrepair after vandalisation it became a fire sale.

For my Mother, she had put every financial resource and emotional energy she had into fighting my Father. She had nothing left. Within two years of the court case finally finishing she was diagnosed with dementia and passed away six years later. No one knows if the two are linked, but the mental toll the fight took on her I have no doubt, possibly contributed to her end diagnosis. 

Today

My focus is on working with individuals and couples to navigate the initial grief, anger, and overwhelm following separation and divorce. Showing a clear path on how they can navigate divorce in a way that protects them, their children and the broader family relationships.

I combine my years of financial planning, psychology research, divorce coaching expertise and my own personal experiences to be a thinking partner for my clients.

Divorce is not something you need to navigate alone.

More about Dominique

Named by Financial Standard as one of the Top 50 Social Media Power Finance Influencers

Financial Expert on Channel Nine Investment Series

Multi-Award Winner as Both a Financial Planner & Mortgage Broker

Can Be Found Skiing Down The Nearest Slopes

Most Grateful For Her Passport