Divorce and Financial Witness Depositions: Strategies, Techniques for Revealing a Complete Financial Picture

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.