If you are gearing up for divorce, you should know that there is some information the court will require from you. These are mandatory information that you have to produce, and you will be deemed to be in the court's contempt if you don't produce them. Here are some of these mandatory disclosures:
List of Assets and Debts
The list of assets is useful for differentiating between marital and separate assets for the purposes of asset division. Knowing what each of you owns will help with equitable distribution of assets; otherwise, you may end up with a lopsided division. In addition, providing a list of assets may also help with spousal support determination. For example, a spouse with minimal assets should get spousal support from their partner.
Tax and Income Information
People don't always reveal their actual income and assets when going through a divorce. Family courts know this, which is why they have made tax information and income information part of the mandatory disclosures. Forensic accountants can use the tax records to prove how much a taxpayer earned in a previous year.
Child Support from Previous Relationships
If you have a child from a past relationship, and you pay or receive child support for them, you will also be required to reveal the information during your divorce. This is because child support from past relationships will affect the current child support determination. This is the case whether you are the one paying for the child support or the one receiving the child support. For example, your child support obligations may reduce the amount of child support you must pay for the children from your current relationship.
Insurance Information
Most people don't know this, but insurance can also affect divorce issues in more ways than one. Consider the example of health insurance. If your spouse receives their health insurance coverage from your partner because of their relationship to you, you may be ordered to continue with the coverage for at least some time after your divorce. Not only that, but health insurance premiums may be included in spousal support or child support as the situation may demand. Then there is also the issue of life insurance cash value, which may be considered as your marital asset and treated as such during asset division. Producing your insurance information is a way of clarifying the kind of arrangement that currently exists.
Having a divorce lawyer can help you prepare and produce these mandatory disclosures with ease. A lawyer, like those at the offices of Cooper Levenson Attorneys At Law, can also help you get the required information from your spouse.
Share19 March 2018
Too many single people assume they don't need to plan their estate. My brother fell into this category, and his unexpected passing left our entire family struggling to deal with his home, belongings, and financial accounts. It took nearly three years for the courts to set up a deal because he left no paperwork detailing how he wanted his estate divided. The situation immediately convinced me to work on my own estate, even though I'm still in my early 30's and don't have children or a spouse to worry about. Since it's a little harder to pick beneficiaries and estate managers when you're single, I collected the resources I used for making my own decisions and decided to publish them here on my blog. Use these resources before talking to an estate planning attorney so you're prepared for making hard decisions.