Thursday, July 1, 2010

Financial Checklist for Divorce

Here is a brief checklist to help guide you with the divorce process. It is by no means a comprehensive list, so anticipate that your divorce attorney will need more information, but it is a good starting place.

Income/ Assets:
• Income tax returns for the previous five years
• Retirement account statements; one from the date of marriage, one current.
• Estimated valuation of all real estate acquired during the marriage
• Estimated value of the marital residence, if owned
• Statements from current investment accounts
• Statements from college savings accounts for minor children
• Estimated (Blue Book) value of all automobiles
• Itemization of all valuable artwork, jewelry, etc. with estimate of values
• Copies of all trusts
• Copies of all whole life insurance policies or annuities
• Recent statements from whole life and annuity policies
• Copies of all corporate papers; Sub S Corp’s, LLC’s etc.

Debts
• Current credit card statements
• Current mortgage balances (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc….)
• Automobile loans
• Promissory notes
• Student loans
• Secured loans
• Other debts and obligations (unsecured)

In complicated cases, a financial professional is helpful to assist in establishing the value of the marital estate. In the more straightforward cases, you and your lawyer can establish the values using and Excell or Numbers spreadsheet, or just a pencil and paper!

The bottom line is that you want to identify everything that was obtained during the marriage, or used as marital property during the marriage regardless of how it was obtained.


No comments:

Post a Comment