Guide
Forensic accountant cost in divorce: what drives the fee
Updated
Most people who search for this figure are not buying an investigation. They are trying to work out whether the accounts of a business one spouse controls can be taken at face value.
What the expert is usually asked to do
- Value a business interest, and explain the basis on which the valuation is made.
- Assess sustainable income, which can differ from drawings, dividends or declared profit.
- Advise on liquidity, meaning what can actually be extracted from a business and over what period without damaging it.
- Address the tax consequences of a proposed division, which are often the difference between a settlement that works and one that does not.
- Trace funds where there is a real evidential basis for saying assets have been moved or understated, rather than a suspicion.
Why the appointment is usually joint
In family proceedings a single joint expert is the ordinary starting point, and expert evidence requires the court's permission. That has a direct effect on cost: one report rather than two, no meeting of experts to reconcile competing opinions, and no duplicated review of the same records. It also has an effect on expectation. A single joint expert is not your expert. The duty is to the court, and the report will say what the evidence supports whether or not that assists the party who suggested the instruction.
What makes one instruction cost more than another
- The number of entities
- One trading company with clean accounts is a contained exercise. A group, with a property holding entity, an overseas subsidiary and intercompany balances, is not.
- The state of the books
- Where records are incomplete or contested, the expert has to establish the figures before addressing the questions. That preliminary work is often the largest part of the fee.
- Disclosure disputes
- An expert waiting on documents cannot work efficiently. Time spent chasing, re-reading and revising as material arrives in stages is time billed for no additional output.
- The scope of the questions
- Valuing a shareholding as at a date is a defined task. Establishing whether income has been suppressed over several years is not, and the estimate should say so.
- What follows the report
- Written questions to the expert, an experts' discussion, and attendance to give evidence are separate stages with separate costs.
How to keep it proportionate
- Ask the expert to help frame the questions before instructing. A well drawn list of questions is the cheapest cost control available.
- Ask for a staged estimate, with a scoping review first where the records are unknown.
- Get the disclosure position resolved before the substantive work starts, rather than in parallel with it.
- Agree in writing who pays, and in what shares. Under CPR rule 35.8(5) parties to a single joint instruction in civil proceedings are jointly and severally liable for the fees unless the court directs otherwise, and family proceedings deal with the same question through the court's directions.
- Compare the value genuinely in dispute against the estimate. Proportionality is a question the court will ask, and it is better asked before the money is spent.
Financial remedy proceedings are governed by the Family Procedure Rules, and expert evidence in those proceedings is dealt with under Part 25 of those rules rather than CPR Part 35, although the underlying principles, permission, the overriding duty to the court and control of cost, run in parallel. This page is general information, not legal or accounting advice on your case.