Discovery is all about the financial
issues in New York we don’t have
Discovery for custody issues now I know
that’s not true across the country but
in New York which is where I practice
there is no Discovery for for custody
and we’ll talk about that in a second
but there is definitely Discovery for
financial issues so what does that mean
it means first of all you would normally
exchange what’s called statements of net
worth they’re sworn to you put all of
your expenses and you usually use the
year prior to figure out what your
expenses are per category so there’ll be
all sorts of categories your rent or
your mortgage your H your taxes um
vacations clothing food groceries dining
out your children’s extracurricular
activities educational expenses all of
that goes in the beginning of the net
worth statement and then you’re going to
move on to the assets and the
liabilities and you’ll then have what’s
called a sworn statement of net worth
those are exchanged that is the
beginning of the discovery process now
you have the framework for what are the
assets and the liabilities hopefully now
sometimes your spouse may not actually
put down all of the assets and the
liabilities and they may not accurately
report what the expenses are perhaps
they think if they don’t accurate
accurately report the expenses they may
pay less support or perhaps all of the
assets and liabilities aren’t there
because they made a mistake an honest
mistake or perhaps they deliberately
didn’t put these these assets and
liabilities down because they just
didn’t want you to know about them and
so now here comes the difficult part
this is the part where you’re actually
sending out what are called Discovery
demands now demand is a harsh word but
that’s what they’re called they are
demands for certain documents and you’re
going to be looking at credit cards
statements and bank statements and
perhaps other documents if there’s a
business involved you may be looking at
General ledgers and you may be looking
at loans that were taken for the
business and you may get financial
statements that have been offered to
Banks and other entities and you’re
going to do a very thorough look at the
tax returns both business and personal
and this is when all of this discovery
comes in then you’re going to see what’s
missing from the discovery is the
Discovery deficient
and that’s very important because you
need to know if the discovery is
deficient have things been left out are
there years left out are there credit
card statements left out are you seeing
a payment for example to American
Express from the checking account but
there’s no American Express statements
being shown to you that is a red flag is
something on the net worth statement but
you’re not getting the documentation
from it for it is something being
transferred to another account but you
don’t have that account information is
something listed on the schedule in the
tax return are there accounts showing
dividends or distributions but they’re
not on the net worth statement and you
have no documentation for it you’re then
going to send what’s called a deficiency
notice as to what you believe is
deficient from your discovery that
you’ve just received pursuant to your
Discovery demand and then you’re going
to probably go to the next step and that
is taking a deposition which is asking
questions under oath of the other part
party and that is very important it’s
important to understand what the assets
and the liabilities are and sometimes
the assets and the liabilities are
complex there may be for example hedge
funds perhaps there’s restricted stock
units perhaps you need to know what the
vesting schedule is for those restricted
stock units maybe there’s bonuses
involved in compensation perhaps there’s
a business and you have questions about
the general ledger or how people are
being paid or why they’re being paid
certain amounts so this is the opp
opportunity to ask all of those
questions and you may work with an
expert actually a forensic accounting
firm that may help you formulate some of
those questions or real estate experts
or valuators of software that someone
may own this is all part of Discovery
and it’s a process and it’s important
that you go through that process
