What to Send Your Financial Expert on Day One: A Checklist for Attorneys

Most schedule problems in a financial expert engagement start with documents that arrive late, in the wrong format, or never. A complete first request avoids most of them.

The insight: send the deadlines before the documents

The court's scheduling order decides what is possible. Tell your expert the valuation date, the expert disclosure deadline, the discovery cutoff, and the trial date before anything else. Scope follows from those dates. An expert who knows the calendar can tell you in the first call which documents are essential and which can wait.

The business

• Formation documents, operating or shareholder agreements, any buy-sell agreement and its amendments, and the ownership schedule

• Business tax returns for the last five years, with every schedule and each owner's K-1 (three years at minimum)

• Year-end financial statements for the same years, plus interim statements through the most recent month

• The general ledger in electronic form (a QuickBooks backup or an Excel export), not a PDF

• Payroll registers, including the owner's and any family members

• Fixed asset and depreciation schedules

• Loan agreements, lines of credit, personal guarantees, and floor plan or inventory financing where it applies

• Leases, especially any with a related party such as the owner's own real estate company

• Inventory and accounts receivable aging reports

• Any prior valuation, appraisal, or offer to buy the business

The parties

• Personal tax returns for the last three to five years with all schedules

• Bank, credit card, and brokerage statements for 36 months before separation

• Retirement account statements

• The financial declaration, even in draft, and any disclosures already exchanged

• Loan applications and personal financial statements given to lenders. These are among the most useful documents in a case. They state what an owner said the business and assets were worth when asking for credit, long before anyone was thinking about divorce.

The case

• Court, county, and judge if known

• Pleadings and the scheduling order

• Whether you are retaining the expert to consult or to testify

• The opposing expert's name and report, if one exists

• The other side's disclosures and any discovery already served

Format matters

Native electronic files are worth more than scans. A spreadsheet can be analyzed. A scanned page has to be retyped, which costs time and introduces errors.

What cannot come from your client

Some documents will only come through discovery or subpoena: the other spouse's business records, third-party bank statements, lender files. Ask your expert for a document list on day one and use it to draft the first round of requests. Discovery timed to the expert's needs finishes sooner than discovery written first and reviewed later.

Questions to ask your expert

• Given the scheduling order, which documents are essential in the first two weeks?

• Which items will I need to get through discovery or subpoena?

• In what format do you want electronic records?

• What is the earliest date by which you can give me a preliminary view?