(0:00 – 0:14)
Hello, everyone. I’m Dr. Michael Mantell with another edition of Family Law Matters. I’m with Bonnie Rabinovitch-Mantel, who’s the founder and managing partner of the Primus Family Law Group.

(0:15 – 2:08)
Hi, Bonnie. Hi, Michael. How are you doing? Great.

Terrific. Very good. Bonnie, today, I want to talk with you about forms.

You know, those things that we endlessly are filling out for every little thing in our life. When it comes to divorce, there are forms that have to be filled out. Correct.

And yet, people think they’re going to march through, and I want a divorce, and oh, I forgot to fill out the form. Tell us about the forms that people have to fill out when they decide that they are going to move forward in their life divorced. Well, Michael, you know, everybody thinks that all you have to do is file the petition for divorce, and that just starts the ball rolling.

And while it starts the ball rolling, in order for you to get beyond that first step, you have to fill out what are called your preliminary disclosures. And there are two documents. One is your income and your expenses, and one is your assets and your debts.

But both of those documents require backup documents. So if you’re thinking about getting divorced, if you’re, you know, worrying about what you have to do, here’s what you need to get for your attorney to do their job. You need 12 months of bank statements from all of your accounts.

12 months. All of your accounts. Retirement, credit card, bank accounts, all of them.

12 months. Start there. What about inheritance? If it’s in an account, we’ll get there, okay? And yes, even if it’s your separate property, you still have to disclose it.

It’s an asset. So trust documents. Deeds.

Anything you can find. Car titles. You need, these are so important.

Your pay stubs. Your W-2s. Three years of tax returns.

(2:10 – 2:24)
These are eight items that I just mentioned that will save you guys thousands of dollars. Because here’s what happens. We can only be as good as our clients, right, Michael? You understand that.

(2:25 – 4:04)
Of course. If we get half of the information, we can only give half of the information. Then the other side goes, well, wait a minute.

I know they have a trust. So they start to think you’re not being forthcoming. And they then issue what is called formal discovery, which says now I want everything of yours for the last five years.

Every receipt. Every everything. Which you have to respond to as an attorney in a very formal way, which takes hours.

It’s not something we can phone in. It takes literally. Hours.

Hours. Translates into money. A lot of money.

Billing. Absolutely. People can save themselves, I mean, serious money.

We’re not talking about hundreds of dollars. Thousands. Tens of thousands.

If they want to understand what you’re teaching them. These two forms and bring it in. Take them seriously.

When your attorney gives you these two forms, take them seriously. In our office, we send a letter or a detailed email explaining what we need from you. It’s a list.

Take them seriously. Do the job of going to the bank and ordering the statements going online. Online, you can get, I think, like 18 months.

Bonnie, let me interrupt you for a moment, please. Suppose someone says, you know, I hired Bonnie Mantel, Primus Family Law, and I got to fill out these forms for her. I’m going to go find another lawyer.

(4:05 – 5:44)
What happens then? Now I go to another attorney. It’s the same forms. Absolutely.

It’s not only the same forms. Remember, you’re in a partnership with your attorney. You guys have, you, the clients, have the best evidence of your life.

We don’t live in your bank account. We don’t live in your credit cards. We take the information and then do what we need, but the information comes from you.

So the more you can gather and bring with you, the better off, the less, you know, we get a lot of clients that go, well, we don’t want to give it all to you because we don’t want you to review it because it’s going to cost us money. But that’s backwards because we review it. We know how we’re not reading.

We’re reviewing it for the information we need. And again, the point is, this is standard. Whether you go to this attorney or that attorney or this attorney, this is required not by the attorney, but by the state to move your divorce process forward.

Right. You cannot, you have to show proof to the court that you completed these documents and exchange them on the other side. There’s a form you fill out for that.

And that form gets filed with the court. And that tells the court, ah, we’ve moved on to step two. Now people get scared.

Your tax returns are not filed with the court. Your social security numbers are not filed with the court. Your attorneys know what they’re, if they’re filing your tax returns, they shouldn’t be.

(5:44 – 7:33)
Okay. So there is inevitably built in mistrust. I don’t believe the forms he’s giving his attorney or being accurate.

I don’t believe the form she gave her attorney are accurate. I’m sure you hear that a lot. How do you deal with that? Well, the more information we give them, the less likely that’s going to be.

One of the things we are very proud of at Primus is we do these disclosures very, very diligently because they are the two most important documents in your case. They start your case and they end your case. You know, if you’re lucky enough to be able to work it out and resolve it soon after, you don’t have to redo these forms again.

If you, if it takes some time, they’re the basis for how you’re going to divide everything. Because if everything is disclosed, you just run down the checklist. So what are we doing with this? This, this, that is so much quicker than where is this? What do I got to do? Oh, we didn’t know about it.

Now we got to go find it. Now we got to go evaluate it. Now we got to appraise it.

It ends up being a lot more expensive. And in couples where there’s civility and they come to you for mediation, let’s say, can a couple walk in together and agree to do that together with you? They both have to fill out the forms. Yeah.

They both have to fill. Yes. They both have to fill out the forms.

They both have to agree that this is everything that exists out there. And then we exchange it and we get it done through mediation in that regard. But if you’re in litigation, if you, and it’s not going to be a case that can settle outside of court, the better yours are, the more credible you are to the judge.

(7:34 – 8:29)
And that’s important. Very interesting. I have a feeling most people do not really appreciate the necessity of something as straightforward as two forms to move the process and to finish the And that’s one of the things that’s wonderful about you, Bonnie, that you make it straightforward, clear, and very easy to understand.

If people want more information about all of this, how can they be in touch with you and your legal team at Primus Family Law? Well, if you want to find out if we’re the right attorneys for you, we offer a free 30-minute phone consultation, and you can set that up at 619-574-8000, or you can reach out to us at info at PrimusFamilyLaw.com and through the website PrimusFamilyLaw.com.