Divorce Lawyers May Be Able to Help With a Dishonest Spouse

It is frequent that spouses going through the breakup of their marriage are untruthful. The reasons for this are clear: there is so much at stake and you do not want your spouse to take everything from you. In order for a court to make a decision, however, it needs to understand what the truth is. Divorce lawyers have a number of procedures that they can use to try to determine what the facts are, but it is ultimately the client who must be assist the lawyer in figuring out how to go about getting their former spouse not to be dishonest in court.

Some courts require initial documents to be filled out and notarized prior to going to a hearing on the case. This is helpful to divorce lawyers because this is a sworn statement that the facts are as they are written to be and may lead to contempt charges if a court finds that they were stated willfully inaccurately. This can be a good starting point for lawyers to determine what the other spouse’s position is on a range of various social and financial issues.

Another tool available to divorce attorneys is formal discovery. Here it is usually possible to do such things as issue depositions, request documents, and ask written questions. While these may sound bland, they can be very effective. For instance, if one spouse is refusing to detail fully their income in order to get out of support payments, it should be possible to serve upon their employer a request for the employer to explain how much the employee makes. If you are concerned the employer is attempting to defend their employee, you may be able to request documents from the other spouse’s employer substantiating their testimony.

Informal discovery is another great way of helping to show that the other spouse is not being honest. This normally involves the voluntary acquiescence of people not directly connected to the case but knowing information to discredit the other spouse. Using this type of discovery technique may be best done where either the formal discovery has not worked or the client does not have sufficient financial resources to go through formal discovery. A good example of informal discovery is where no records were kept of a waiter’s tips, yet the tips made up the majority of that waiter’s pay. In this scenario, it is crucial that other waiters, managers, or people with sufficient are able to inform the lawyer about what the average amount of tips would be for a waiter working similar hours.

Divorce lawyers are fairly adept at knowing when the opposing party is lying, but the problems typically arise in proving to a judge that what the other spouse is saying is not true. Using the above techniques should do a lot to justify to a court what the true facts of the case are.

This article is for the sole purpose of information, and not legal advice. For legal advice, contact a lawyer in your local area to protect your rights and help you get at the truth. Will Beaumont is licensed to practice law in Louisiana, and he has two offices, one in New Orleans and the other in Metairie. He is not licensed in any other state.