During your divorce, one of the most important steps is figuring out which assets and debts you and your spouse share. If your spouse is hiding anything, then you may not get everything that you deserve out of your divorce.
Hiding assets is not allowed legally, yet many people do it. To help avoid a complicated situation, one of the things you can do is speak with a forensic accountant and try to find the assets that have not been disclosed.
What does a forensic accountant do for people during a divorce?
Forensic accountants have a few different jobs to do. They will:
- Collect information about your finances, as well as your ingoing and outgoings, so they can see where money is or is not being used.
- Interpret the results and “follow the money” to see where money is being spent or where it is coming from.
- Put together visual aids and testimonies that they can use to support your cause in or outside of court.
- Testify as an expert witness in your case.
The benefits of working with a forensic account can be vast. These accountants know the most commonly hidden assets and can look for assets you may not know about, such as cryptocurrencies or stocks that your spouse has purchased individually.
What should you do to help your forensic accountant?
It can help your accountant if you have copies of all your financial documents. If you suspect that your spouse is hiding assets, being able to state what you think they’re hiding could help. For the most part, these accounts are well-trained to follow the trail money and assets leave behind when they’re transferred, so they should be able to identify unusual outgoing transfers that are linked to a separate savings account or track a missing piece of artwork that you suspect was sold to a local auction house.
During your divorce, dividing your property fairly is important. If your spouse doesn’t want to be fair, then it’s worth looking into working with your attorney and a forensic accountant to get evidence that your spouse is trying to hide assets to avoid dividing them with you.