Credibility is essential to any court trial. A judge wants to hear your honest answers to his questions, so that he can make the best decision regarding your case. Fabricating information, concealing important facts, or using hyperbole in the court room could work against you. When it comes to divorce, obscuring financial information is dangerous. In order to divide property fairly, you will need to be perfectly honest with your attorney and brief him or her on all of your assets. For example, if you have a secret offshore bank account, or a part-time job you rarely mention, your divorce lawyer needs to know. This is because your spouse could bring up monetary properties that you did not mention in court. It would certainly look bad in trial to find that your spouse knew more about your financial affairs that you assumed he or she did.

Clients that do not want a divorce at all are prone to hide financial material from their attorneys. These men and women believe that by hiding bank statements or tax records, they can somehow delay the divorce from happening and maybe make the nightmare disappear. Unfortunately, concealing information in this way will not help your case. If your spouse is determined, he or she will most likely obtain the information by subpoena eventually. Lawyers need all the financial information you have available in order to best help you in your divorce case.

If a judge discovers that you have been trying to hide your assets, he may favor your spouse, and you will lose valuable property. For example, a man in Northern California was working through a divorce when he was asked to list all of his assets to his attorney. He had a secret bank account that he had been using to fund is rendezvous with various girlfriends during his marriage, and he often paid for hotel visits and restaurant dates with these women from this hidden source. Convinced that his wife had no knowledge of the bank account, this man decided to keep the money a secret. He did not tell his lawyer, and hoped that the divorce would be finalized before anyone found out. He wanted the secret stash to himself, and did not want to divide the money.

Though he was convinced that she had no idea of this account, it turns out that she did. In the divorce trial, her lawyer brought up the hidden stash. One of the husband's angry ex-girlfriends had sought revenge on him by contact his wife and telling her about the bank account. Because he was found out, the judge determined that all the cash in the account should go to the wife. Even if he had been able to keep the account hidden until after the divorce was final, that may not have protected him. Many times when a spouse finds hidden accounts later on, the money can be divided in a re-opened divorce case.

Some divorced couples will even hire financial consultants to make sure that they are getting their fair share of the estate long after the divorce. It is very important to tell your lawyer everything and state all of your property and monetary assets. This way, you will not be taken by surprise in the courtroom, and will not need to worry about your spouse finding out and seizing your secret accounts. A practiced attorney can work hard for you and attempt to get you the settlement you want, if you will trust him or her even with secret finance accounts.