In a high-asset divorce, having a team working on your behalf is critical, as not just a single lawyer has all of the resources you may need. With the guidance of a comprehensive divorce team, you learn more, gain more perspective, and potentially enhance the outcome. A forensic accountant is nearly always a core component of any high-asset New Jersey divorce.
Understanding Your Divorce Team
A high-asset divorce comes with multiple factors that make it far more complex. Pulling together a talented team of professionals who have specific knowledge and skills may protect your rights and support you as you navigate the upcoming challenges and limitations.
Navigating a high-asset divorce in New Jersey requires a multi-disciplinary team to address the individual financial and emotional complexities of your case. In most situations, the following divorce team is beneficial:
- Divorce Lawyer: Provides legal guidance, advocates for your interests, and ensures compliance with New Jersey’s family laws. Your lawyer works closest to you.
- Forensic Accountant: Specializes in uncovering hidden assets, valuing complex holdings, and analyzing financial discrepancies to ensure equitable asset distribution. A forensic accountant focuses on what you do not know but need to learn.
- Divorce Financial Planner: Assists in understanding the long-term financial implications of divorce decisions, helping to create a sustainable post-divorce financial plan. The decisions you make here influence the rest of your life. Getting it right is critical.
- Certified Divorce Lending Professional (CDLP®): Offers expertise in navigating mortgage financing and real estate matters specific to divorce situations. Often, this component of your divorce team is solution-based, finding the best possible route forward in your situation.
- Divorce Coach: Provides emotional support, helps manage stress, and guides effective communication throughout the divorce process. Your divorce coach is the alley and advocate you need by your side.
The Pivotal Role of the Forensic Accountant
Even if you believe you have a comprehensive understanding of your financial situation, oversights, hidden details, and crushing hidden truths can create an uncertain future for every divorce. In high-asset divorces, the financial landscape can be intricate and opaque. A financial plan aims to create a fair way forward using all available insights to craft that guidance. If you do not have all the individual pieces to understand the full scope of your financial well-being, you need a legal team to learn it.
A forensic accountant brings specialized skills to ensure a fair and transparent division of assets. They play several critical roles as a component of your divorce team.
Uncovering Hidden Assets
A forensic accountant investigates details and digs into evidence to learn what assets exist that could be a component of the marital estate. Forensic accountants are adept at identifying concealed assets of all types. Some of the most common hidden assets these professionals can help you find include:
- Undisclosed investments
- Offshore accounts
- Underreported income
“There could not be.” That is a statement many people in a high-asset divorce believe until they watch these professionals work. Their job is to ensure transparent asset division by exposing all potential information.
Accurate Valuation of Complex Assets
Many assets in a high-asset divorce do not have a simple and clear value to them. In some cases, those values change frequently, while in others, they may be met with complications due to multiple parties owning a share. Your forensic accountant will determine the precise valuation of all assets, including the intricate details of assets such as:
- Business assets
- Real estate holdings
- Intellectual property
Having this insight enables your forensic accountant to ensure you know your rights and do not receive assets that may not be worth what you expect. This is essential for equitable distribution.
Analyzing Financial Discrepancies
Instead of brushing aside inaccuracies or information that does not add up, your forensic accountant determines what the specific discrepancies are and why. This takes time and work, but with their experience, they have the ability to determine what actually took place. By scrutinizing financial records, forensic accountants detect inconsistencies or signs of financial misconduct, safeguarding the client’s interests.
It is important to know that not everything the divorce lawyer provides may be thoroughly or accurately investigated. Until your divorce team, including your forensic accountant, verifies the accuracies or the lack thereof, you cannot know if there is information that could influence equitable asset division.
Expert Testimony in Legal Proceedings
Many high-stakes divorce cases go to court. If you have any questions or concerns about financials, your forensic accountant has already done the work to verify your situation, accuracy, and potential hidden assets.
Their expertise allows them to serve as credible witnesses, presenting complex financial information clearly during court proceedings. If there are questions about any bit of accuracy, they can attest to it as a professional. This lends credibility to your case and, in the case of a jury trial, supports your legal efforts.
Collaborative Approach with Legal Teams
Working alongside lawyers, forensic accountants help develop informed strategies, ensuring all financial aspects are thoroughly addressed. There could be numerous questions or concerns another member of the team has that require more investigative work or better insight to clarify various decisions. With their guidance, this member of your team can provide you with peace of mind when making financial decisions related to asset division.
Let Our Toms River Divorce Lawyer and Divorce Team at Zeigler Law Group, LLC Fight for Your Rights
Zeigler Law Group, LLC has the team of professionals you need with a solid reputation available to guide you. Our divorce team members are carefully selected, proven, and dedicated to providing each client with the resources and support they require in high-asset divorce matters. Toms River divorce lawyer Sonya K. Zeigler, Esq. will provide fierce legal representation. Call 732-361-4827 or contact us online to schedule a free consultation. Located in Toms River, Red Bank, Princeton, and Mount Laurel, New Jersey, we serve clients throughout Ocean County, Monmouth County, Mercer County, and Burlington County.