Discovery: How Your Divorce Attorney Can Help You Find Hidden Assets
Divorce is difficult enough when both parties are cooperating, but throw in an uncooperative spouse and it can make it much worse. If you suspect your spouse is hiding assets during your divorce proceedings, you may want to talk with your divorce attorney about discovery. Below is a basic overview of the process and how an attorney can help.
Understanding the Process
Discovery is a common process in divorce cases and is used as a legal tool when you feel as if your soon-to-be ex-spouse isn't disclosing all of their assets.
The process of discovery provides you with a way to retrieve financial documentation and admissions from your spouse, even if they're unwilling. The courts can compel your spouse to act according to the discovery demands or be fined or held in contempt. Discovery involves many steps, but the most common include document requests, requests for admission, written questioning, and testimony given under oath.
Further Investigation
If, after the first step has been completed, you feel that your spouse is hiding assets in a more covert manner (signing over to third party, covering it with fake documentation), you may wish to investigate their finances further. This can require significant amounts of time on the part of your attorney and financial advisor, however, so determining whether this time and extra cost is worth it will depend on the amount you're hoping to uncover and how strong your suspicions are.
Further investigation requires taking a deeper look at bank statements and any transactions that occurred within a certain period of time preceding the divorce, especially if the divorce was planned. If third party involvement is suspected, such as your spouse transferring assets over to a family member or friend until after the divorce has been finalized, there may be ways for your attorney and financial advisor to link any financial activities to your spouse and uncover hidden assets. If done with cash, tracing such activities can be more difficult, requiring more time and causing you to incur higher investigation costs.
Determining the Worth
As mentioned above, further investigation following discovery can be time consuming and costly. Before going ahead, it's important to determine whether further investigation is worth it and what the likely benefits will be.
A few thousand dollars' worth of assets may not make much difference in the settlement, but tens or hundreds of thousands will. If you strongly suspect that your spouse is hiding amounts that will affect the settlement, further investigation may be worth it. Your attorney and financial advisor can further help you flesh out your plans and see whether the benefits outweigh the time and money spent, or whether it's best to leave well enough alone. While it can be frustrating to know that your spouse has gotten away with hiding assets, sometimes it just isn't worth the time and costs to pursue it further.
When you work with an experienced divorce attorney, like Hart Law Offices, PC, they can help you through each step of the divorce process and bring you out the other side as unscathed as possible.
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