What’s wrong with using a forensic accountant in your hunt for a spouse’s hidden assets? Nothing, provided you hand that accountant all the pertinent information you can. We’ve mentioned the need for these professionals frequently on our site, and this Forbes article by Jeffrey Landers explains similar reasoning.forensic accountant divorce

The problem with forensic accountants can be timing. We are often brought into an asset search after a forensic accountant has been hired. The accountant has the sense that something is amiss but beyond being able to testify that the numbers don’t add up, things are at a standstill and the pressure to settle continues to mount.

Our firm is not made up of accountants, and we are not able to testify that the books and records of eight companies controlled by Husband are probably not reflecting all income generated.

But where we can offer help is to find entire new companies that Wife and her accountants (forensic included) did not know existed.

How can this happen? For the simple reason that forensic accounts are trained to look at what is in front of them and to decide if it makes sense. They can tell if money has been stolen, but are on less firm ground in deciding where that money went. What did it buy? Where might it be sitting today?

Our strength is in taking a fresh look at a person and trying to find everything he owns.

If our client tells us not to bother looking for assets outside a person’s state of residence, we look anyway. If our client tells us about a piece of property that was sold last year, we make sure it really was sold. If it was, we try to see who bought it, because it could be that Husband sold it to a company he, a friend or relative controls.

So by all means, hire a forensic accountant if you need one. Just remember to make sure an investigator with a wide scope has taken a look. No point in examining “all books and records” when there could be millions stashed in a company you know nothing about.

Want to know more?

  • Visit charlesgriffinllc.com and see our two blogs, The Ethical Investigator and the Divorce Asset Hunter;
  • Look at my book, The Art of Fact Investigation (available in free preview for Kindle at Amazon);
  • Watch me speak about Helping Lawyers with Fact Finding, here.