Florida Family Law Financial Affidavit Explained

What is Florida Family Law Financial Affidavit?

Family law cases in Florida, including those addressing divorce, child support and child custody issues, often involve the gathering of sensitive information about each party’s financial situation. One of the main purposes for collecting this information is to ensure fairness to each party. When a person agrees to make child and/or spousal support payments, the amount identified as support should be based on the actual income of that individual . Proper calculation of the parties’ incomes is very important in a variety of family law issues. A Financial Affidavit is a legal document in which the party fills out information about his/her income and expenses. This Financial Affidavit should be filed with the Court and served on the other parties prior to any support hearing.

Requirements and Forms

To ensure accuracy and completeness, the Florida Family Law Financial Affidavit is subject to strict requirements. A financial affidavit in these types of cases should not be dismissed as being just another form that needs to be prepared. In reality, this form is one of the most important documents that must be presented to the Court in a family law case. The law requires judges to carefully review these forms in an effort to assess the true financial position of each party. There are specific forms for different levels of income.
There are two forms of the Florida Family Law Financial Affidavit, depending on whether the person is a low, medium, or high income earner. Short Form – For low-middle income individuals showing $50,000 or less per year in gross income. This form provides for supporting testimony and for additional comments. Long Form – For high income individuals showing $50,001 or more per year in gross income. This form allows for far more information concerning assets and liabilities. It also requires supporting testimony and may be accompanied by additional comments.

Completing the Affidavit

Generally, the affidavit should be completed in its entirety. There are very limited exceptions. The first line of the affidavit states "If you know or have information about the other party’s income or net worth, complete Part A as to that party." Most commonly, Parties will complete both of the Parts in the affidavit.
To properly complete the Florida Family Law Financial Affidavit, the party must include all income, assets and liabilities, and evidence of the income and expenses. When completing the income portion of the financial affidavit, a party must not include interest, dividends and other sources of income not recurring, such as one time inheritances, gifts and lottery winnings. Should the Party complete their own affidavit in their own handwriting, as opposed to typing it, the financial affidavit does not have to be notarized.
A common problem occurs when a party lists their income. If a party is self-employed, the income or salary must be reported as gross income on the financial affidavit, before tax. As an attorney, I routinely see parties simply use the amount which they net by subtracting the taxes from their paycheck. This is not the proper way to complete the affidavit. Instead the party must include the gross amount or what they make before taxes. Regardless of whether the payor or recipient of alimony or child support, the party must use the GROSS amount. The GROSS amount is determined from the pay stub, which can be obtained through the employer. In the case of self-employment there may be a need for a financial expert to help determine and then testify as to the gross income for child, stepchild, spouse, fiancé(e) or domestic partner.
The second section that often poses a question of interpretation is whether or not the party should include their home. Should you report the house which is the marital home? Does equity count? The answer is yes, if this is a marital asset you should both report it. The Florida Family Law Financial Affidavit provides separate worksheet labeled the home. This section should be filled out with information concerning the home.

Frequently Made Errors

A frequent error is the inclusion of inapplicable information (an item not required by the form) or exclusion of relevant information. The Judges are trained to look for specific pieces of information when reviewing financial disclosures, and they expect to find it on the form. Failing to provide requested information is not excusable and it may cause you to appear less than credible to a Judge. A common example would be a failure to list family members living with you. This is specifically requested in prior year’s income section and in the employed and unemployed sections of the Affidavit. If you fail to list relevant individuals (such as "your boyfriend") living with you and supporting you in prior years but you do list them in current year income because you can’t list them in prior years, a Judge will have to question why you didn’t have these people listed. They will also question your credibility as to the support you did not claim you received . Another common mistake is improper support of the information provided. The form should be completed to substantiate the information. A tax return is pretty obvious evidence, but there are some other items which should be available to support what you’ve disclosed. Bank records, payroll stubs, business bank records, loan information, spreadsheets, and even money orders received should be printed and provided with the affidavit when it is filed with the court. The Court may make copies of your documents so you have the original copy to hand to the court when the Affidavit is filed. If you are unsure of some of the numbers you are entering into the Affidavit, you should contact an accountant or bookkeeper to assist you in "reconstructing a complete financial picture". You should be prepared to provide any documentation that you entered into the Affidavit so the accountant/bookkeeper can do that work. Many times casual records regarding income and expenses kept over time will be sufficient to support your affidavit numbers.

Filing the Affidavit: Submission and Deadline

There are no magic words for filing a financial affidavit in Florida family law cases. You can prepare the document and file it in the case just like any other document. However, there are times when you will be required to file your financial affidavit in a special way.
If you are a litigant in a case where both parties are represented by an attorney, your attorney will normally have two weeks after being served with a financial affidavit during which the attorney can file a contested financial affidavit. A contested financial affidavit is a response to the other party’s financial affidavit. It is sometimes used to challenge certain items on the other party’s financial affidavit that the responding party believes are incorrect.
If you are an unrepresented litigant, there isn’t normally a time limit on responding to the other party’s financial affidavit. However, it is prudent to respond quickly.
If you go to the courthouse to file your financial affidavit, you will be unsure how many copies of the form you need to bring. The clerks at the clerk of court counter also will not know how many copies to stamp. Under the rules of the Florida Supreme Court, you are required to file the original financial affidavit and one copy for each party in the case.
One of the requirements of the Family Law Financial Affidavit is to provide pay stubs for the last two months or the last two pay periods passed. If you have not provided pay stubs for the two months or the two pay periods prior to your financial affidavit, you could be in violation of the financial affidavit rules. A judge could choose to hold you in contempt of court. This is a rare finding, and a judge might not view a minor deficiency in pay stubs as being a violation of the rule for using financial affidavits. However, you do need to provide two pay stubs when you file a financial affidavit. If you do not have the two pay stubs when you file the financial affidavit, at the very least you should write on the copies of the financial affidavit the words "pay stubs not available."
When a judge sets a trial in a case, she orders both sides to provide updated financial affidavits. If the trial is six months away, this does not seem like a big deal. The goal of the two financial affidavits is to give both parties relevant information before trial. When a judge orders updated financial affidavits, the purpose is to have a more accurate picture of the parties’ financial conditions at the time of trial.
If you want your trial to occur more quickly, you have to provide the updated financial affidavit to the other party in seven days after the date the trial order was signed. If your financial affidavit is late, there can be consequences during the trial. For example, if you are trying to prove that the other side has been spending money on a mistress, the judge may prevent you from using a document to prove your claim. The document is known as a business record. The judge may rule that your opponent wasn’t given the required seven days to review the financial affidavit. And if your side is trying to admit a document into evidence at trial to prove your spouse is making more money than he lists on his financial affidavit, again you could be barred from doing so because of the failure to timely file the financial affidavit.

Significance of Legal Support

More often than not, people preparing a financial affidavit for the first time struggle with the language, accounting, and information requested by the document. This is further complicated in cases involving numerous sources of income, complex business income, debts owed, and/or when values on bank accounts, retirement accounts, and businesses are in flux. Using an attorney to assist in preparing the financial affidavit is the best insurance policy for ensuring you cover every avenue (sources of income, debts, tax consequences, etc.) involved in the proper financial disclosures and that your attorney has the information necessary to begin an ageless and difficult discussion about equitable distribution .
However, this does not alleviate the need to be forthcoming and honest when filling out a financial affidavit. In most cases, an opposing attorney will carefully analyze the document for inconsistencies and/or red flags. When a party fails to disclose, for example, a rental property or corporate ownership on their financial affidavit, the opposing attorney will typically request further disclosure, including documentation to support the values imposed on the account or the absence of a value, in detailed supplemental questions. Although completely objectionable, such requests can significantly increase the costs involved for preparing the financial affidavit up front and will result in the legal fees being further contested at a later date.