What is a financial expert? Why do you need one?

Sherri Holder

By Sherri Holder, Forensic Accountant at The Holder Group

Updated January 10, 2025

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I serve as a financial expert, also known as a forensic accountant. So my role involves the financial aspects of divorce. Anything from looking at the income of the parties, assisting in preparing marital balance sheets, valuing certain financial assets, such as equity awards in businesses or pensions. We also do a good bit of business valuation work. So valuing closely held businesses, which are oftentimes the largest asset in divorce, when it gets complicated, that’s when you need to bring in a financial expert and you can lose out on assets. I testified in a case this week, initially, the husband didn’t have a financial expert. They took the wife’s word for it that her pension was only worth what the investment had been, which was about $50,000. But I valued the pension.

It was worth a million, but until someone got in there and looked at it, that would have been leaving a lot of dollars on the table. So it’s just when you get into those more complicated financial assets that you need us for a marital balance sheet. I think you would always need a financial expert. If you’re valuing a business because one person’s keeping it, that’s just not something that anyone can do. You need someone qualified. We have designations, we have training in order to value those businesses. I also think it helps you understand the financial assets and how you want to divide those assets. So we advise everything from the tax consequences of the assets that people are receiving. And not everyone understands that.

So if you don’t have a financial expert, you may not understand the difference between the tax implications of a Roth IRA, which is you’ll receive and not have to pay taxes, versus a regular IRA that you would have to pay taxes as you take that money out.

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