How Discovery Works In Family Law

donegalman2019

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I am involved in a divorce and I am concerned that my wife is not revealing all her assets / her affidavit of means is not accurate.
I am aware that I can get my solicitor to apply to the court for an Order of Discovery. I am just wondering how this works exactly; does the court write to all banks in ireland / life companies as well? / state savings / an post ? . It would seem that there are a myriad of places money could be put in Ireland / abroad and that it would be impossible to track all possible places money could be put. Thank you for any assistance.
 
"Does the court write to all banks in ireland / life companies as well? / state savings / an post ? "

No. An Order for Discovery is an order made against a person. It's for that person to comply, or not, with the Order.

Very few people are good at hiding their assets. A good trawl through three years Bank/Credit Card Statements will usually throw up anything unusual that is not disclosed on the face of the Affidavit of Means. Other obvious places to look are property searches or copy Probates.

It is a mantra we hear all the time: S/He has loadsa money.

And the answer is always the same- if you've no actual evidence and there is nothing on the face of it demonstrating this, you're probably wrong.

mf
 
Very few people are good at hiding their assets. A good trawl through three years Bank/Credit Card Statements will usually throw up anything unusual that is not disclosed

While I am sure it is true that few people are good at hiding assets, I would imagine that some people are well able to do so.

Personally I have a savings account that has had no transactions to or from any other account since it was set up in 2008. I am not hiding this from anyone but I doubt it could be discovered by any investigator with access to my day to day accounts.

If a person wanted to hide assets and set about that ahead of time, I dont think they would be caught. Somehow this brings the thread about the people who didn't pay their mortgage for years and haven't been repossessed. You can get away with a lot.
 
But we are talking about marriage break down- and you would expect that a married couple would have some idea what assets each of them have?

I appreciate that high net worth parties, especially of an older generation, may not have intimate knowledge of one person's business assets but we really are generally talking about people who've married, raised a family, worked out their finances over many years and who would pretty much know to the penny what the other has?

mf
 
Thank you both for your very detailed replies which are very helpful. I am just interested in the probate issue. I understand that an individuals will is publicly available (through the probate office?). However, are the actual amounts that an individual has received available (through the probate office?). So say a parent dies and lives all of their estate worth €100K to their daughter, can you just establish they got 100% of the estate or that they got €100k?
 
Your solicitor can obtain a copy of the Probate which will show the net estate of the Deceased.

If there is only one beneficiary, it's not rocket science to work out what sort of money the beneficiary received.

Plus your solicitor would simply go back and wave the Probate at the other solicitor and say - well, what about this little windfall! Explain, please.

But if it was a long time ago and the money is long gone...................

Be wary of chasing things that were never there or are no longer there.

mf
 
Thank you both for your very detailed replies which are very helpful. I am just interested in the probate issue. I understand that an individuals will is publicly available (through the probate office?). However, are the actual amounts that an individual has received available (through the probate office?). So say a parent dies and lives all of their estate worth €100K to their daughter, can you just establish they got 100% of the estate or that they got €100k?

+1 as mf1 says above.

FYI, when a will has been admitted to probate it becomes a publicly available document from the Probate Office.
Even if probate happened over 20 years ago you can then get the same documents from the National Archives.
A visit to an old will might be relevant if you are tracing likely distributions of assets to specific individuals.
It should also be possible to get a copy of the specific schedule of assets associated to the probated will.
 
Thank you direct devil. So as I understand it, both the total value of the estate and also what the individual beneficiaries got from that estate is publicly available?
 
Thank you direct devil. So as I understand it, both the total value of the estate and also what the individual beneficiaries got from that estate is publicly available?

Essentially, yes.

The rider is that what was bequeathed in the will may not always be what the beneficiary actually receives.
So, if the actual value of the estate was much reduced by the time of death the full amount of any specific bequest might not be there to satisfy it.
Alternatively, if the legacy is simply a proportion of the estate, or a part of it, that is a straightforward division.
 
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