Things that forensic accountants investigate when assisting with a divorce

Among the many roles forensic accountants have, they also provide services to couples who need someone to assist them with the divorce in the court. It is worth mentioning that those who need the services of a specialist in forensic accounting should only work with experienced and trust-worthy professionals in order to benefit from the best results. One of the easiest and timesaving methods to find one of the best tax tribunal appeal specialists to help you with your divorce is to do some detailed research on the internet. Here is a list of things that these accountants look for when they have to deal with such situations.

Decreased earnings and unreported retirement funds

Among the things that forensic accountants investigate when dealing with a divorce are both parties’ unreported retirement funds, which in most cases is a deceptive practice and decreased earnings. Although the latter ones might not be considered a red flag by most regular people, in the eyes of a highly trained accountant, this can offer valuable information that can be used in court. They start the investigation from the moment the earnings started to decrease and look for the right reason why this has happened, which in most cases shows that money is being funnelled in a different direction.

Tax returns

Another item that forensics investigate in such cases is tax returns that belong to both partners in the couple. Believe it or not, a specialist in forensic accounting can find valuable and useful information out of reviewing tax returns, such as details about real estate, investments, businesses, partnerships, estates and trusts and much more.

Financial data gathered from hard drives

It is worth mentioning that the accountant makes use of any tool he or she has in order to find the needed financial information and the best friend in this case is technology. An important task in this process implies using specialized software that can read all the data that can be currently found on a hard drive and that had once been stocked there. This means that even though that data has been deleted at some point from that hard drive, the forensic accountant can still manage to retrieve it using a computer program and there can be some highly valuable information hidden deep in the heart of the hard drive.

Overall, these are only a few examples of tasks that forensic accountants have to look for when they assist with a divorce.