Divorce Checklist: Your Spouse’s Financial Records

Deciding whether to start a divorce proceeding can be extremely daunting and scary. Having a game plan will help ease some of your anxiety.

A major part of the game plan is gathering information relevant to your marriage. This information includes financial records for you and your spouse, both as a married couple and individually. Our clients who are getting divorced in Marietta frequently want to know what financial records they have access to regarding their husband or wife.

Some of the most common questions include:

• Can I log into my spouse’s email account?
• Can I log into my spouse’s bank accounts? Is that illegal?

The law forbids you from violating your spouse’s reasonable expectation of privacy. What does that really mean? If your spouse has previously given you permission to access any of their accounts and has not directly revoked this permission, then you may continue to legally access the accounts.

On the other hand, what if your spouse has taken steps to protect the accounts? For example, they changed the passwords or locked printed records in a file cabinet or safe. Then, you do not have legal access to the documents except through the formal discovery process.

When accounts or records are legally accessible, they are fair game. You should gather as much as you can. If you’re unsure about whether you are allowed to access particular records, give us a call. The divorce attorneys in Marietta, GA at Bivek Brubaker & Prescott family law are happy to help.

If any of the following documents are applicable and legally accessible to you, we encourage you to gather these financial records and documents for both spouses. Having this information on hand will help keep your divorce costs down and assist in your divorce case:

• Income tax returns (past three years)
• Corporate tax returns (past three years)
• Year-end pay-stub for the most recent previous year and all current-year pay-stubs
• W-2, K-1, or 1099 forms for the past three years
• Current investment account statements (IRA, 401k, 403(b), pension plan accounts, etc.)
• Banking statements for checking, savings, money market accounts, and others for the past year
• Credit card statements for the past year
• Current appraisal or Zillow estimate on any real property
• Current mortgage statement on any real property
• Life insurance policy, including any cash value, beneficiary designation, and death benefit
• Health insurance breakdown of monthly premium costs per person covered
• Documentation of any childcare costs incurred by your family
• Documentation of any private school tuition and associated school costs incurred by your family
• Documentation of any extracurricular activity costs incurred by your family
• Documentation of the costs of any extraordinary medical needs of any children

It is perfectly okay if you do not have access to some – or even all – of these records. In every divorce case, each spouse has the right to conduct formal discovery. During discovery, we can legally gather all of the documents (whether you can get them personally or not). However, if you can get them, it can streamline the process.

We hope this short divorce preparation checklist has provided you with some answers regarding a divorce in Marietta, GA. For more information regarding Georgia divorce laws, contact the Marietta family law firm of Bivek Brubaker & Prescott LLC.