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Rating: 
Summary: comprehensive, readable, useful - and omits key points
Review: I have specialized in providing professional education and therapy to divorced, courting, and re/wedded couples since 1981. I am (a) 66, (b) a stepgrandson, stepson, and ex-stepfather and stepbrother, (c) an invited Board member of the Stepfamily Association of America, (d) a contributing editor to 'Your Stepfamily Online,' and (e) the author of six personal-growth and family-relations books. I am not a financial expert, as author Patricia Estess is.
I recommend this book to readers who want (a) a well-researched, readable, practical introduction to money management in stepfamilies, starting in courtship. The single reservation I have about this book is that the author makes no mention of several factors that will hinder typical readers from following her practical advice. Like most authors in this genre, she omits:
1) why and how to assess and reduce co-parents' psychological wounds from childhood (vs. divorce). Most divorced and stepfamily adults appear to be significantly wounded - and don't (want to) know it;
2) the origin and impacts of blocked grief in adults and kids, and how to spot and reduce it;
3) co-parent unawareness of - and indifference to - five key topics: (a) normal personality formation, composition, and function; (b) keys to high-nurturance families and relationships, (c) effective communication skills, (d) healthy 3-level grief, and (e) stepfamily realities, norms, implications, and hazards. And...
4) the implications of little effective re/marital and co-parenting help (i.e. courtship coaching, classes, informed counseling, co-parent support groups) available in most communities and the media.
In my clinical experience, these factors will often promote needy, love-dazed courting co-parents to commit to the wrong people (mate, stepkids, and "other parent/s"), for the wrong reasons, at the wrong time. Then the factors inhibit co-parents from identifying and resolving these core personal, role, and relationship problems, including those related to money and asset-management:
http://sfhelp.org/10/problems.htm
Nontheless, this is a genuinely helpful book for most divorced-family and stepfamily adults and professional financial advisors. For specific suggestions on how to choose practical, useful books on stepfamily co-parenting and re/marriage, see this:
http://sfhelp.org/11/choose_bks.htm
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