Forensic Accounting is the application of investigative and analytical skills for the purpose of resolving financial issues in a manner that meets standards required by courts of law.

Divorcing individuals must position themselves for a radically different future. Under tremendous stress, they must make financial decisions affecting their lives and their children’s lives. Because emotions can overwhelm rational self-interest, they can benefit from a CPA's specialized tax, audit, valuation, and forensic skills.

What LUENINKA offers:

Matrimonial Litigation Support in Florida (aka: Forensic Accounting for Divorces)

- Settlement strategies
- Litigation support
- Expert Witness Testimony
- Finding assets
- Distribution of assets
- Determine value of personal assets, both jointly and individually
- Determine value of business holdings, both jointly and individually
- Determine whether assets are encumbered (by debt or legal restrictions)
- Determine how much each spouse earns
- Determine how much each spouse spends
- Determine what tax liabilities are related to proposed asset distributions
- Differentiate between marital and separate property
- Calculate Income Available for Support (Alimony / Child Support)

In simple terms, dividing a divorcing couple’s property involves identifying, valuing and apportioning assets, and CPA tax and audit expertise is a natural foundation for discovering the most relevant information to complete that process. Practitioners routinely determine owners’ equity and cash flow, income and the value of any noncash benefits, according to a range of statutes, regulations, rulings and case law. CPAs can’t practice law, but they do apply it when analyzing financial data. Local matrimonial statutes and case law are, in general, less difficult to understand than many regulations practitioners interpret daily.

It isn't unusual for a divorcing couple’s financial records to be in disarray and spread between two households, with important papers stuffed in a shoe box, for instance. That shoe box often contains brokerage and bank statements, deeds, titles, invoices and tax returns along with other important records. In divorce consulting, a CPA organizes and analyzes those financial documents, outlines the couple’s holdings and income, relates findings and explains the tax and other issues to the hiring attorney, the parties and the judge.

Based on that information, the court then divides the assets and decides the amount and duration of support, if any. To award child or spousal support, the court looks at each individual’s income, cash flow, noncash benefits, perquisites and established level of expenditures and projects the need of the recipient, the ability of the payer to fund it and the tax consequences to both. (For example, spousal support might be taxable where child support is not.)

CPAs assisting clients analyze divorcing individuals’ historical spending patterns and use the information to project post separation and post divorce expenses. They consult their client’s attorney(s) and refer to local case law to determine what types of income and expenses a court considers relevant when it establishes pending-divorce and post divorce support awards, the amounts of which may differ.

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