We’ve been talking about things that you can do to prepare for divorce in this series of videos and the seventh thing that you can do is gather financial documents and copy them. This can be critically important in preparing for a divorce and the reason we’ll make a lot of sense intuitively and that is a divorce is a lawsuit like any other and when a lawsuit is concerned, evidence rules.
You have to be able to prove things. It’s not enough to simply know them and few things can prove the existence of assets that’s all those kinds of things like a bank statement or a credit card statement or any other sort of financial documentation. A lot of us think about that when it comes for business, we save those things but a lot of us don’t necessarily think about that for our own personal stuff and it’s important for both of them.
When Business Owners Get a Divorce
I just want to tell you a quick story about why this can be so important. I had a client and we’re going to call her Jennifer. Jennifer and her husband started a business. Both of them worked in the business and built it up to a business that was generating substantial income. Well, they had split up and decided to file for a divorce and during the early stages of divorce process, Jennifer’s husband came to her and said he need certain documents related to the business having to do with the finances – the income, invoicing, all those types of things and because Jennifer did not want to disrupt the business – she handed those documents over. Jennifer’s mistake was she didn’t copy them. She didn’t keep a copy of those for herself and as a result, there were significant income during the course of the divorce that we weren’t able to prove because her husband at that point, simply stated that a lot of people would do this that those statements didn’t exist – that those invoices weren’t there and we had no way of countering that because we didn’t have copies of those documents for ourselves before Jennifer turned those over. This can be a critical thing in preparing for a divorce so if you’re facing a divorce, make sure you take the time to copy any financial documents that you have. If you’re not able to necessarily copy things or those things aren’t available, at least write down things like account numbers, banks, other institutions and things like that.
Georgia, Atlanta Divorce Attorneys Here To Help You
Again, this is a situation where evidence is king and having those documents is an irreplaceable asset when you’re trying to move through the divorce process and trying to get the best outcome possible for you.
I’m David Ward from the Ward Law Firm and I help protect the business owner who’s facing divorce. Call us today!
