As Bitcoin surges in value once again, divorcing spouses may be tempted to convert cash into electronic currency. Finding it can be harder than finding cash, but if you do find it, you can make a comparatively fast case that your spouse is undercounting assets.
Photo: FlippyFlink, CC BY-SA 4.0 via
Philip Segal’s lengthy interview about asset searching with divorce journalist Ilyssa Panitz is here:
It appeared on line in Authority Magazine.
Now and again a client comes to us for information on a spouse’s assets. But if the client has already signed a power of attorney, the search could involve both spouses’ assets.
A power of attorney between married people could work like this: Wife grants Husband the power to buy and sell things on Wife’s
If asked to describe the attributes of a good investigator, “empathetic” is not the first word that would come to mind for most people.
For anyone looking for hidden assets, though, empathy is a must.
Empathy means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another,” and it’s a critical tool for any professional
A frequent problem when taking in a new asset search in divorce is figuring out how far back to look.
Clients in divorce usually know a lot more about their spouse than anyone else, at least when it comes to daily habits, close friends, and other bits of information that can inform our asset search.
This blog has been pretty clear over the years that an offshore asset search is not for the faint of heart or anyone on a tight budget.
We have recommended that even if you think there are assets outside the U.S., you could get a better idea of where they may be by searching U.S.
At some point with nearly every asset search our firm conducts, we end up telling clients that finding assets is often more than a one-step process.
The one step some people think we need to take is to consult some databases, and voila! A pot of gold they can easily seize.
While there have been
One of the most frequently-asked questions new divorce-related clients ask us is: “If I need a forensic accountant can you do that?”
The answer we give is that we are not forensic accountants, but you probably need us anyway because forensic accountants don’t do what we do. And, you may need a forensic accountant as
Finding assets can be satisfying work, but frustration sometimes comes in realizing that a client’s lawyers haven’t been asking the right questions in their depositions.
We have written repeatedly that getting bank account information without a court order is illegal (other than discovering it on a shared computer or in records lying around). When we
Just as it’s nice to know what number someone is using when they call you, wouldn’t it be useful to see where someone was when they sent an email? That information is often contained in the “fine print” of an email known as the “header.”
In brief, the header describes the route an email takes