Financial disclosure forms are required to be filed in divorce and separation cases in Louisville and across the state of Kentucky pursuant to family court rules. It is common that your husband or wife may file the form incorrectly as many couples do not have the correct understanding of what items should be disclosed.
Kentucky law allows a divorce judge to divide property and debt all the way up until the time of the divorce. (Compare this to a divorce in Indiana, where the marital estate generally closes at the time the case is filed.) Usually the financial disclosure form is filed weeks or months before the divorce is finalized, and often the spouses have already physically separated by the time they are working with their attorneys to complete their financial disclosure. This leads to one or both sides of the case leaving out property or debt that came into existence after the parties separated.
Another common error is failing to list assets that were acquired before the marriage, or only listing items that are in joint names or that were obtained during the marriage. Kentucky law recognizes pre-marital and non-marital items, but it is important that your attorney properly categorizes these items on the required disclosure form so that those claims are not lost.
In contested divorce cases, multiple disclosure forms are often filed – a preliminary or initial disclosure filed early on in the case, followed by a final version prior to the divorce trial. While some items can be corrected in the “final” version, these disclosure forms outline important issues for the family court, and it is important that your divorce attorney is experienced with properly disclosing property and debt in your case.
Sample financial disclosure forms can be found at http://courts.ky.gov/resources/legalforms/Pages/legalformlibrary.aspx
