Inside the Money Wars: Divorce, Forensic Accounting & High-Stakes Litigation

Money problems in divorce are rarely about “one weird transaction.” They’re about complexity: multiple accounts, transfers that look harmless until you see the full trail, business income that blends into personal spending, and documents that do not tell the whole story. We bring in CPA, Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, and mediator Ryan Finley to show what forensic accounting really looks like when a case needs facts, not guesses.

We talk through how litigation support helps attorneys and clients during discovery, including how a forensic accountant organizes financial disclosures, builds a marital balance sheet, and translates confusing items like investments or bonus plans into plain English. Ryan also explains the core workflow of following the money across bank statements, credit cards, and investment accounts, then isolating the transactions that do not reconcile so the right questions get asked fast.

From there, we get into the moments that change outcomes: hidden accounts created during advisor changes, tax return red flags like strategic overpayment, and dissipation claims when marital funds support a girlfriend, boyfriend, trips, or gifts. We also cover why self-employed income and business valuation can be the hardest issues in divorce, plus what to watch for with real estate partnerships, missing parcels, and paperwork that looks “off.” We even touch on practical settlement strategy, like when keeping a low-rate mortgage might actually improve post-divorce cash flow.

If you want clearer numbers, smarter questions, and fewer surprises, listen now, then subscribe, share the episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review so more families can find trustworthy guidance.

If you would like to speak with one of our attorneys, please call our office at (503) 227-0200, or visit our website at https://www.pacificcascadelegal.com.

To learn more about how Ryan can help you or to learn more about Freedom Financial Services Group, you can view his website at: https://www.freedomfsg.com/ 

Disclaimer: Nothing in this communication is intended to provide legal advice nor does it constitute a client-attorney relationship, therefore you should not interpret the contents as such.

Transcript

Intro/Outro 0:01

Welcome to Modern Family Matters, a podcast devoted to exploring family law topics that matter most to you, covering a wide range of legal, personal, and family law matters with expert analysis from skilled attorneys and professional guests. We hope that our podcast provides answers, clarity, and guidance towards a better tomorrow for you and your family. Here is your host, Steve Altitian.

Steve Altishin 0:32

Hi everyone, I'm Steve Altishin, Director of Client Partnership through Pacific Cascade Legal. And today we have CPA and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst, Ryan Finley, to talk about understanding forensic accounting and litigation support in a divorce. Hey Ryan, before we start in, how are you doing today?

Ryan Finley 0:53

I'm doing well. Thanks for having me on today, Steve.

Steve Altishin 0:55

Oh, I love it. And so before we just kind of start in on the topic, um, you want to tell people a little bit about yourself and you know how you came to this kind of particular kind of work?

Ryan Finley 1:05

Yes, uh, my name is Ryan Finley. I'm the founder of Freedom Financial Services Group. I've been a financial expert or person for 35 years. So my background, I'm a CPA, I'm a CDFA, uh, I'm a CVA, which is a certified evaluation analyst, and I'm a mediator. So the way I got into this business is I have a I was in public accounting for two years and then went to work for a company in new business development and acquisition. So I that taught me how to value businesses and to look at different things from a third-party perspective. I did that, and then I was I've I've been in real estate, I've been in construction, I've spent about 35 years in the financial arena as CFO of multiple companies. And then about five years ago, I had a friend that was a divorce coach, and she said, Hey, I've got this complicated financial situation. Do you mind looking at this after work and on the week, you know, help me on the weekends? And I was like, Yeah, I'll help you. And I started looking at it, and it just, you know, it was it it made sense and it felt good to help somebody that that the client that she had had no idea what her financial situation was. So I was able to look at that and explain it. And that's kind of how I got my toe into dip my toe into the pool of the divorce arena. And then, you know, I've got my certifications, I got my CDFA, I've had my CPA for over 30 years, um, and just kind of got into it. And it it was self-fulfilling from the from the perspective of helping people when somebody comes in and they they're lost, and then you're able to help them explain it and calm them down and see their uh confidence build as they're going through this unknown situation. So that that's in a roundabout way, and that's how I got into this business.

What Forensic Accounting Really Is

Steve Altishin 3:04

So wow, I love it. That you have hit all of the boxes that attorneys really like to try to find experts about in a divorce. It's kind of crazy. I mean, it's even the mediator part. I I really like that. Okay, so let's start in on just this is kind of my 101 question because a lot of people don't quite understand it. And that is talk a little bit about just what forensic accounting actually is. I mean, you know, it compared to other kinds of accounting services.

Ryan Finley 3:36

Okay, well, I'll start basically forensic accounting is trying to clear up the financial picture, and that's trying to make complicated things into a simple form. And there's different ways to do that. When somebody hears forensic accounting, they say, oh, they uncover all this fraud and hidden assets and things, and that's a big part of the job, it really is. But the other side of it is doing litigation support, making sure attorneys understand the financial situation of the client, making them understand complicated bonus plans, making sure that uh there's an equitable distribution of assets. And from a client's perspective, it's my spouse dealt with all this financial situation or financial situation. I had I raised the kids. From their perspective, it's me taking all these components, this complicated financial situation, and explaining it to them in terms that they can understand. Just say, you know, I know we had this, I know we have that, and what but what does that mean to me? You know, and so from a forensic accounting perspective, those are kind of the things that that that in my opinion, um make forensic accounting. It's you know, the making things clear, finding the hidden assets, and explaining things in a way that people can understand it.

Steve Altishin 4:58

Yeah, yeah, you're you're breaking down the complex and making it seem simple, which it isn't.

Ryan Finley 5:06

That's a good way to put it.

Using Discovery To Organize Facts

Steve Altishin 5:07

Yeah. Uh so you we talked a little bit about this. Obviously, kind of get into the discovery process because a lot of this stuff you're talking about is either revealed or kind of reviewed during discovery. Um, so do you can you step in and and help folks if they're in the discovery process? And you know, and it and maybe how, and I know you got a ton of examples that you can talk about of things you've done for people just just in the discovery process.

Following The Money Across Accounts

Ryan Finley 5:39

I I do. Yeah, and in a nutshell, you know, we we've got some attorneys really that that basically when they get a big I'll say high net worth client because from an attorney perspective, that's when we're most useful to them. Other clients, not so much, it's more explaining to them. But from an attorney's perspective, if it's a complicated financial situation, a high net worth individual, lately we've had attorneys just saying, here's a discovery, you put it together and bring it back to me. You know, give me a week to review it before it's due. And what that allows us to do is really get to know that person and their financial situation and the assets they have. And so we put that together, that goes to the other side, we get the other, the other spouse's discovery back, and then we dive into it. And that helps us. We're able to put together the marital balance sheet, the income and expenses. We, I mean, we we look at the bank statements, we look at the credit cards, we're able to analyze what their spending is. One of the things you know, we talk about that that's kind of interesting, and people ask, What did you find? or tell me an interesting case, and things like that. And let me kind of tell you how we do that first, and then I'll tell you some pretty funny stories or pretty interesting stories. But so, what we do when we look at somebody's financial picture, we look at the bank accounts, we look at the credit cards, we look at the investment statements. And the thing that we do is you follow the money. We've got software, but we'll upload three years' worth of bank statements, all the accounts, and it will upload them, it spits it out into these different spreadsheets. Well, we'll consolidate all those bank accounts. And so there may be in this let's, for example, let's say there's five different bank accounts in this spreadsheet that we've taken all the individual statements, upload them into a spreadsheet, and then we'll put them all together. So, what that tells us is if where the money's going. There's the paycheck. We can see that get deposited every two weeks. So, from that paycheck, where does that go? Where does that get spent? Does that get it may get moved to an investment account? It may be to an account where they pay their living expenses out of it. Where does that go? And so we track that and we're very good with the detail. We, you know, if something looks, we we try to classify most of the transactions over a certain dollar amount. This is, and that does a couple of things to us. That tells us how much they're spending, that what's their, let's say there's their monthly expense budget is six thousand dollars. Well, is that food? Is that mortgage? You know, and we're able to put that together based upon this analysis. But the bigger part is following the cash. If there's money going from account to account, we like to color code it. And so that way you can see everything going in this account is red, everything coming back from this count's blue. So at the end of the day, you see the spreadsheet, and we've got all these different colors. Now, if there's something that's this, let's say orange, we don't know where that money went. So we're gonna ask the questions where did this $5,000 go? Where did this $10,000 go? And there may be nothing that's done wrong, but at least it makes it makes them answer the questions. Well, where was this money spent?

Steve Altishin 8:58

It takes you to like they know the attorneys at least, speaking on that behalf, they see this and then they know what questions to ask, just like you said. It's it's oh, here's what I need to concentrate on. I don't have to spend all my time on this.

Hidden Accounts And Tax Return Signals

Ryan Finley 9:13

Exactly. Because if these things match up, it makes sense. This money went to this account, this money came back. That makes sense. We don't need to ask about this, but you know, and that's one thing we do. We'll we'll do a whole the things that don't make sense, or the things we have questions on, we'll put those into another spreadsheet and we'll send those to the attorney. These are the things we need, as you mentioned, that we need additional information on things that you can ask questions. Where do these funds go? You know, in some of these cases, you know, I've I've got a couple of cases where I found a million and a half dollars for this one lady where the husband, this was on the investment side. He was he changed in financial advisors and was moved money over to a different financial advisor, and in the process of doing that, formed a different account that he that the wife didn't know about. So, you know, she sees four accounts going to four accounts, not knowing that there was a fifth account created there that that he was putting money in because he was pre-planning his divorce and separation. Yeah, and so you know, that was something that the attorney didn't see. So I we came back in and we're like, okay, these are the beginning balances here, these this is the ending balance here. What that don't match up. So that was a situation where we gave that list to the attorney. The attorney asked, Well, why is this different? You know, and where did this money go? And we were able to find that and add that back to the marital balance sheet, and she got her the her share of it. We look at the details on you know, the discovery part we'll do. We look at all the tax returns. We look to see if this is the consistent income over three or four years and this is the consistent taxes paid, it may look reasonable. What's their source of income for all these taxes? Is it is it investments, is it bonus, you know, those kind of things, and then that kind of tells us what direction we go to. Another example is you know, we were looking at four years of tax returns for this one couple. Notice the income was pretty consistent, might have increased a little bit, which you kind of you kind of expect and hope. The taxes were pretty consistent until the year before the divorce, and we noticed that it was a million dollars higher than it was the previous year. So, what the husband's planned to do was hey, I'm gonna overpay these taxes when we get divorced. I'm gonna file an amended return, and that money is gonna come back into the joint account that I have custody of post-divorce. And so we were able to find that, you know, and get that added back to the Merrill estate. And so that was another half million dollars with the wife.

Steve Altishin 11:48

Yeah, I mean, I I've heard of a lot of hidden accounts, but to be hiding an account in the IRS, yeah, that's that's pretty amazing, and you found that out Yeah, it seems also like what this can do not only is necessarily find things that are bad or wrong, it's to not find them, and because these these spouses can be at each other and not necessarily reasonable, and it's like they're almost wanting something bad, and you know, you can should you know kind of bring them back to reality of no, this this isn't them doing anything wrong. So let's get that behind us and start working on this other stuff.

Dissipation And Tracking Affair Spending

Ryan Finley 12:36

And and that's an excellent point, Steve, because when people go through divorce, there's mistrust, you know. There's and we've we've been in situations where we've been brought in to find things like that, where you know, we think the husband has dissipated these assets, and and I'll I'll go into that as well. And we think that you know, he had these separate funds, and we think he's commingled them into the marital estate. I've had situations where we've searched high and low, and you know, he the guy, or we'll say spouse, we won't say guy, but the spouse in this situation kept everything separate, and there was there was very little co-mingling of assets. So in that situation, we didn't find anything of significance, but it was it it brought, like you said, it brought more trust. Okay, I feel better about it because I don't feel like I'm getting cheated out of anything. You know, the spouse feels more uh peace of mind is the word I'm gonna or the phrase I'm gonna use where they feel, okay, we looked at that, there was nothing there, I feel better about it going on. I don't feel like I'm getting cheated out of something or or ripped off or anything like that. So that that's helped a lot. One of the things that we kind of touched on that I didn't mention during my forensic accounting description was there's a term called dissipation. And we do a lot of that. And what dissipation means for the uh people that don't know what it means, it means the spending of marital money for non-marital purposes, and what that could be is it could be a girlfriend, it could be putting money aside for the their the themselves, but most of the time it is related to uh a significant other or a girlfriend or a paramour or something like that, and one of the things we do is we track that down because in dissipation, at least in Tennessee, if the money spent in dissipation and you can prove it, you get spit added back to the marital estate because the spouse is entitled to half of that.

Steve Altishin 14:43

Yep, yep, same in Oregon.

Ryan Finley 14:45

Yep. So a lot of what we we've done, a lot of cases that way where one spouse has had a girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever, and we've gone through to see how much have they spent on them, how much money of our marital money was spent on this person. When they buy them gifts, did it take them on trips? Did they travel different places? And one of one of the things I mentioned, the way we put things together and upload these statements and put them in a spreadsheet, it's particularly helpful in looking for dissipation because you know, somebody may put one or two, let's say, let's say I'm gonna use a husband in this situation, takes a girlfriend to Miami for a trip, a weekend trip. You know, they may put some card, some money on this credit card, they may put some money on this credit card. When you look at that credit card, you see one charge, you don't think anything of it. But when you put everything together, you're like, oh, from July 2nd to July 5th, there's a whole lot of charges on these when we put all these things together. So anything between that date and that date, you know, you'd probably think would be dissipation because they they were in this place with that person spending money. And so you would try to add that back to the marital estate. So that's that's a helpful way that we find things that way as well.

Steve Altishin 16:04

Oh, we we have we've had we've had clients we've had to tell, no, you cannot buy your fiancee a wedding ring until the divorce is over.

Ryan Finley 16:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you get the one that, hey, can we hurry up and finish this so I can get married? You know, it's like it's just what you said.

Steve Altishin 16:26

It's like it's crazy. People they don't know what to do. I mean, they just kind of and then so they do it. Yeah, there's gotta be certain kinds of cases though that you get involved in that are especially challenging. And really, your your expertise is is especially useful.

Ryan Finley 16:49

And I'll give you a particular example of that. Like I said, I've got a background in development and construction and real estate, and that's probably my expertise because we had a case last year where the guy had a partner in his business. They bought 100 acres of this commercial property. We'll we'll use that as an example. Let's say they bought 100 acres. Well, they sold 50 off at this year, then they sold another 20, and then they sold another 10 and another 10, and they said, okay, we've sold it all. You know, and so they didn't disclose it on the marital balance sheet or in their discovery assets. And so we go back and we start adding up. Okay, they started off with 100, they sold 50, there's 20, there's 10, there's 10. Where's the other 10? Oh, well, we sold it. That's part of it. And so we started going back and looking at the parcels, and we pieced together another 10 acres that was right on the interstate, right off an exit, right across the street from a bucky's that had probably a $4 million value. Yeah. It just left off. And so that was the other thing that my background was helpful in because we knew how to look for those things and add things up and you know, do property tax searches to say, hey, this is still in that partnership's name.

Steve Altishin 18:04

So it comes to mind that it can help a person, even if the person is doing this, because sometimes they just don't know, they're not supposed to. And if you can bring out that, well, hold it, you know, here are these issues. And if you go to the court and you try to tell the judge that you know they don't exist, and then someone puts down something that says, here they are, you're just gonna get nailed. And so you think you you can actually sort of protect clients from themselves.

Ryan Finley 18:36

You you you do, you do. And the other thing, you know, in this in this particular case, we do look at all the documents. In this case, this guy he happened to be kind of a shady character. He had a partner and he gave us all these documents. I'm transferring this asset to my partner. We had a capital call, I was unable to make this capital call, so he diluted me from 50-50 to 90-10. So, okay, show us those documents. And so we look at those documents and the dates on them. They changed certain dates on them, but some of the dates in the documents were for six months in the future. You know, there's like there's no way that's a valid document because you you you took a document you had from September and you backdated to January, but you didn't change some of the dates from September, you know. So it's like it was just crazy. It it was, but some people missed them. The attorney missed it on the case, you know, and so we came back through and and and found it and brought their intention in it because as you said, the judge saw the intent and just really uh really crucified them. He really got on the case.

Trusts And Self-Employed Income Tactics

Steve Altishin 19:44

It was you know, it's there's a thing out there floating around right now that uh is called uh litigation abuse, and you are the kind of people that can catch that because it does go on, you know. They just they figure the other side doesn't know what they're doing, and and so we'll we'll do all these shady things, and that usually happens where there's not an attorney on either side of the case. Do you um do you ever get you know like odd things? So I was kind of thinking like, what if there's a couple family trusts involved? What if there's self-employed, you know, business people? I mean, those have got to be kind of tricky.

Ryan Finley 20:28

Those are the hardest ones. I I I've dealt with a few trusts, but the self-imp the self-employed people are the hardest because they can run personal assets through the business. There are personal expenses, you know. There may be their car may be paid for by the business, their mortgage may be paid through for the business, and then so you have to kind of go in and say you've got to pull out and add back those expenses. So you pulled out those expenses and say, okay, these are your business expenses. We pulled out your personal expenses. We want to see, you know, this asset is still a marital asset. It's a mean you own this business and you're married, so it's a marital asset. So, you know, we want to put a value on that business. So uh you have to kind of back in, uh, add, take out certain expenses to see what the net on the cash is and the business valuations. That's hard. And then sometimes, like you said, the self-employed people can divert money, they can not they can take payments and not record them, they can do business for somebody else. I'll do this for you. You don't have to pay me. I'm not gonna put this on my books, you just give me the cash or something like that. That way it's not reported. The spouse doesn't isn't aware of that money coming in, and so they're kind of stockpiling that on the side.

How We Use Financial Experts

Steve Altishin 21:52

Yeah, yeah. If I came to you and I said, Okay, what is my goal? What should I? Be striving for with your services is this to make everything clearer? Um, I mean, can it help with my case? I mean, how how do you kind of work all this in helping their cases? Because, like you said, you've done mediation, you've done valuation, there's all these things that other do you give me advice? Do you give advice to my attorneys, or do you work? We all work together. How does that kind of come together to make it work? That's a great question.

When Keeping The House Works

Ryan Finley 22:29

And and let me see, I'll I'll try to answer it in the simplest form as I can. We have good because I need that. We have different clients, I guess. Sometimes if the client hires us directly, it's how to help them understand their situation, their financial situation. So we're basically we're their advocate to help them ask the right questions to the attorneys and to understand the their financial situation. I like to put, I've got this big 55-inch uh television that I use as my monitor, and I put things up there and so that way we can all look at it and talk about it. Now, from an attorney's perspective, they bring us in to help get our arms around the situation and kind of help them explain the complicated bonus plans to them. The, you know, if they think there's if there's if they think there's hidden assets there, if if it's a complicated financial situation where there's a business valuation, you know, a lot of times this attorney will hire this appraisal, and then the other side will hire their appraisal, and you get two different appraisals on this business valuation, and they're so far apart. It's like they Ryan, you know, can you look at both of them and let me know what you what you think? And and and I I help in that way, interpreting that. I'll say, well, I think this one has a good approach, but they left this, this, and this out. And the other one, you know, it just I don't agree with the theory behind their appraisal. They they they left this stuff out. So, you know, I I try to help them go the right direction, ask the right questions. This is where you should focus your this is the the your biggest, your your the the biggest area of unknown is this. So maybe you should ask go down these questions. You know, this is the big a big asset that we've really not really paid attention to, but we should because there's there's potentially more value there. Deal structures, you know, how how should what's the best way to allocate these assets, these varital assets? You know, if we do it this way, then it's better for the client. One of the things that's come up recently, you know, we start looking at their living expenses. And if let's say the wife wants to keep the house, and a lot of times in the past, it would be more expensive for her to keep the house than it would be to get an apartment. But we're still seeing some of these mortgage rates at two and a half and three percent. And so it's like your mortgage is gonna be less if you stay in the house, if you're able to financially, if we're able to work that where you can do that, from a cash flower perspective, that's a better option for you. You're getting building equity in the house, and your payment's still less than what your what a three-bedroom apartment be would be. And that's you know, you've got three kids, you're gonna need something bigger than a two-bedroom. So it's you know, we we look at we give them different options that way and try to explain in terms they understand what what the best direction would be. You know, attorneys are smart, though. They they they know they get they get a lot of this, but there's some complicated situations that sometimes the attorneys just simply don't have time. We've got all these other cases, you know. Brian, help us explain this, and then you know, we'll just do it that way.

How To Reach Ryan And Wrap

Steve Altishin 25:54

Or it's your expertise. I mean, you're the you're the one who knows it the best. And and what you just said something about about mortgages. I know we're almost out of time, but this was fascinating. If someone has a 2.2% mortgage and someone has an eight percent mortgage, I mean, the value of the home is probably different. It's it just feels like you know that that's a that's something that goes into the stuff you're you're working with. And I wouldn't have kind of figured out that. Yeah, thanks. That was great. That was wow. Well, uh unfortunately, we really are out of time, Ryan. But thank you so much for being here to talk today about understanding forensic accounting and not just the accounting, but the litigation support that you that it provides in a divorce. I think that's wonderful. But before we go, Ryan, if someone wants to get a hold of you, can you let them know how to do that?

Ryan Finley 26:55

Absolutely. Steve, thank you for having me today. I appreciate it. I've really enjoyed our discussion today. Oh, yeah. Uh, the best way to reach me would probably be our website. It's www.freedomfsg.com. And there's a button on there they can click and it says schedule a consultation and it's a free consultation. Or, you know, that's probably the best way to get a hold of me. Or if they if if they're like me and they like to pick up a phone and reach reach out, my phone number is 941-945-2846. And we help people throughout the United States.

Steve Altishin 27:31

Oh, I love that. And that's a great thing. That's a great thing. Um, so again, thank you. Thank you for joining us today. And everyone else, thank you for joining us. Anyone, anyone has further questions today, you can always also post it here, and we can get you connected with Ryan, or of course, you can go straight to Ryan. And until next time, then stay safe, stay happy, and be well.

Intro/Outro 27:54

This has been Modern Family Matters, a legal podcast focusing on providing real answers and direction for individuals and families. Our podcast is sponsored by Lander Home Family Law and Pacific Cascade Family Law, serving families in Oregon and Washington. If you are in need of legal counsel or have additional questions about a family law matter important to you, please visit our websites at landerhome law.com or Pacific Cascade Family Law.com. You can also call our headquarters at 503-227-0200 to schedule a case evaluation with one of our seasoned attorneys. Modern Family Matters. Advocating for your better tomorrow and offering legal solutions important to the modern family.