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Course Details

Course Information
  • smart_display Format

    On-Demand

  • signal_cellular_alt Difficulty Level

    Intermediate

  • work Practice Area

    Family Law

Date & Time
  • event Date

    Tuesday, June 13, 2023

  • schedule Time

    1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT

  • timer Program Length

    90 minutes

Credit Information

  • This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.

$197.00
CLE
ALL

This CLE webinar will guide family law attorneys through deposing witnesses concerning financial records and other documents containing financial information or reflecting financial condition. The panel will review deposition strategies and practical techniques for asking questions about business and personal tax returns, W-2s and 1099s, financial statements, spending patterns, and more to ensure that a complete and accurate financial picture is obtained.

Faculty

Andrea E. Nelson
Attorney
Burns & Levinson LLP

A Senior Associate in the firm’s Divorce & Family Law Litigation Group, Ms. Nelson works with a wide range of clients involved in divorce and family law matters. Her practice focuses on divorce, paternity, child custody, support, modification, and contempt matters. Ms. Nelson also routinely negotiates and drafts prenuptial and postnuptial agreements.

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Catherine E. Spanu
Attorney
Bowditch & Dewey LLP

Ms. Spanu is an associate in the Private Client Group. She represents clients in divorce, alimony, child support, child custody, and removal matters, post-divorce modification actions, complaints to establishing maternity and paternity, complaints for contempt, and drafting prenuptial and postnuptial agreements. Ms. Spanu also assists clients in guardianship, conservatorship, and other probate litigation matters.

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Description

Tax returns, financial statements, and other financial documents are snapshots in time and are usually prepared to facilitate some transaction other than a divorce or division of property. The information most relevant to parties in a divorce case may not be completely, clearly, or adequately reflected on the face of these documents simply because of how the information is organized.

The value of deposition testimony depends very much on the attorney's approach. In that regard, family law litigators must hone their skills with practiced techniques to elicit testimony and evidence critical to a favorable disposition of the case for their clients. When examining witnesses about finances and related documents, counsel will want to be proficient in the techniques of exhaustion, boxing-in, and summarizing.

If the witness holds an interest in multiple entities, and especially if those entities are within an enterprise, getting useful information from all the financial documents takes strategy and skill at both the planning and execution stages. Counsel need to know who to depose and what questions to ask about these financial documents to get the whole truth.

Listen as this experienced panel shares both strategy and deposition skills for lawyers in divorce cases.

Outline

  1. Goals of deposition
  2. Strategies
  3. Use of accountants and other financial experts
  4. Techniques
    1. Exhaustion
    2. Restating/summarizing
    3. Boxing-in
    4. Structuring depositions for difficult and evasive witnesses
  5. Questioning about specific documents
    1. Income tax returns and related documents
    2. Financial statements
    3. Other common documents with financial information

Benefits

The panel will review these and other key questions:

  • What deposition questioning techniques will maximize the information obtained from witnesses?
  • How should deposition best practices be applied when structuring a deposition for an evasive witness?
  • How will these approaches improve counsel's ability to impeach an opposing witness?