When is a Los Angeles forensic accountant necessary in divorce?

Thousands of people every year in the United States go through the divorce process. Divorce is often cited as the most stressful time in a person’s life. They sometimes have to go through enormous lengths to dissolve the legal entity created when they got married in the first place.

A Los Angeles forensic accountant divorce specialist can be part of this process. Some forensic accountants can be expensive and cost thousands of dollars. But their work can be essential in ensuring that divorce proceedings occur as fairly and reasonably as possible.

Many types of divorce

One important fact one must remember when considering the process of divorce is that there can be a wide variety of different types of divorces. The media has reinforced the idea that the only form of divorce is an acrimonious one. Books, movies, and television shows often show couples that divorce and fight each other for years in the courts. Like most other concepts, the truth is often somewhere in the middle between the two extremes. There are thousands of divorces every year that happen amicably. Some of them happen without much involvement from lawyers at all.

Other divorces happen in incredibly stressful situations and with a great deal of hostility and hatred on both sides. These are the situations where lawyers are almost always required to keep the peace and make sure each party is being properly respected. Sometimes, a lawyer can enlist help from other professionals to make the arguments necessary to properly divide assets. One of the professionals used is the forensic accountant in Los Angeles.

The need for a forensic accountant

Wealthy people often go through enormous lengths to try and conceal their assets for one reason or another. They have shell companies that are owned by other shell companies. There are partnerships, land groups, and limited liability corporations from which people can draw a nominal or substantial salary. Sometimes, people create companies or institutions and then create other holding companies within them. In other scenarios, a company needs to put several people into a holding LLC to meet ownership requirements to fulfill a contract. All of these connections can immediately become incredibly confusing for a layperson who does not have the training of a professional accountant.

A forensic accountant can be essential to untangling these financial knots. They review bank statements, incorporation forms, and paper trails that make up every financial asset that may be part of a marriage. Over a period of weeks or months, they can start to form a coherent picture of the entirety of a person’s finances. With that information, they can start to fairly divide a couple’s assets to aid in the divorce proceedings.

When it’s time to find out the truth

Anyone who is about to go through a high-dollar divorce needs to properly assess their financial situation. They should know the general state of their finances and often know the financial situation of their partner. After all, a large number of divorces occur because of money. There is simply not enough money or money that is in the wrong place. If the couple does not have any money, there is often little need for a forensic accountant. These professionals require payment and their fees can easily run into the hundreds or thousands of dollars. A person who is getting divorced needs to determine whether or not their divorce settlement will be anywhere near the amount required for a forensic accountant.

If it turns out that they do have that much money, they need to contact their partner’s lawyer and begin to discuss the basic outlines of the settlement and asset predictions. A partner should know in general what their partner is going to claim that they have as assets at the beginning of the process. If that amount is at or near the amount that each person guessed, then there is most likely no need for a forensic accountant. There is a good chance that a person will be honest and disclose all of their assets and money that they have so it can be divided fairly.

In the case that a partner does not honestly disclose their numbers, the other party needs to bring in a forensic accountant and grant that person power from the judge. They’ll need to have some sort of evidence that the person is potentially lying about assets. Then, the forensic accountant can go to work. This individual will peruse hundreds and potentially thousands of pages of financial records to determine exactly what the other person possesses. In some of these cases, a forensic accountant can be protected by potential perjury laws. They have to be told the truth by all of the individuals involved in the investigation. Then, forensic accountants can begin to draw a detailed map of exactly how much each party has in assets.

Conclusion

Forensic accountants also provide greater importance to any marital situation. When you hire forensics accountants, they are kind of like an unimpeachable expert who can sniff out and figure out when one or more parties is acting unlawfully. Above all, they help reduce the amount of financial lying that goes on in a marriage. These accountants are essential for ensuring that a person can receive what they absolutely need to in a divorce proceeding.

A forensic accountant can be a key part of any substantial divorce case. If you are going through difficulty in divorce matters surrounding your partner’s assets, contact us for a consultation to ensure you receive everything that you are entitled to and a full and fair application of the law.