Simplify Financial Disclosure for Divorce with Onward and Plaid
Dividing finances during a divorce can be stressful and overwhelming. You’re asked to pull together a full picture of your financial life, but tracking everything down often feels slow and confusing. For many, it’s like climbing a mountain of paperwork just to get their financial disclosures completed.
At Onward, we believe this process should and can be simpler. That’s why we integrate with Plaid, a trusted financial data service, to help you securely connect to your financial accounts and complete your financial disclosures faster, with less stress, less paperwork, and more confidence.
Why Financial Disclosure Matters in Divorce
Financial Disclosure is the court-required exchange of complete and accurate financial information between spouses during divorce proceedings. It’s used to ensure that both parties have a clear, honest view of the financial picture before decisions are made about child support, spousal maintenance, and dividing property. To fulfill this requirement, you must provide honest, accurate, and up to date details and records of your income, assets, debts, and expenses.
Assets: You will need to itemize everything of substantial value that you or your spouse owns, whether acquired during the marriage or held as separate property before marriage or received by gift/inheritance. Common items include vehicles, real estate, bank accounts, retirement plans, business interests and valuable collections. Keep in mind that you should only include items that have measurable financial value and not items that hold sentimental value but little monetary significance.
Debts: You’ll detail everything you owe, from mortgages, vehicle loans, credit card debt, personal and joint lines of credit. A complete debt picture lets the court divide financial responsibilities.
Income: You will be asked to provide up to date documentation of all earnings from pay stubs, the last few years of tax returns, and records of other income streams such as interest, dividends, freelance income, rent income or other.
Expenses: You must break down your average monthly expenses such as housing, utilities, insurance, childcare, transportation, groceries, and more. To get a full and accurate picture, it’s advisable to review expenses over the last two years, or a representative period that reflects your typical financial situation. This data helps the court assess your financial needs when determining support and other obligations.
This is a lot of information! That’s why many people struggle with it. Manually gathering account statements, tracking expenses, and calculating totals is time-consuming and missing even a single document can lead to delays, disputes, or unfair outcomes. However, when your financial information is clear and complete, negotiations become a lot smoother and less expensive.
With Onward and Plaid, you can link your bank accounts securely and safely, saving considerable time, and reducing errors. We’ll help you collect and organize all information and generate easy-to-read financial reports. This is useful for both you and the court to understand your finances fully.