Q. I am struggling to fill out the financial statement form.  My lawyer said to just fill it out and don’t worry about it.  But my friend said I need to be super careful because if we don’t settle even the initial financial statement can be problematic for me later on if I’m questioned about why my expenses changed so much during the process. Any advice on the right way to do this?

A. Your friend is right. It is better to spend the time and get it right than to rush to get it done and completely misstate your expenses, income and/or assets by overlooking something that might be important.

For most people, the income section is easy.  You look at your most recent pay stub and transfer the income and withholdings to the correct lines on the financial statement.  For interest and dividends on savings and investment accounts, I generally recommend taking last year’s reported interest and dividend income and divide by 52 weeks and divide in half as half will be attributed to your spouse. Your income from prior year comes directly from your W-2 from last year.

In the asset section, if you have online access to your accounts, log in and fill out the current balance in each account. Take a screen-shot and send it to your lawyer as back-up documentation. Otherwise look at the last available statement for each account for the balance.  List out the institution and only the last 4 numbers of the account (do not put the full account number or your full Social Security number on the form).  For the beneficiary column, I list whose name is on the account.

The expense section takes the most work.  In order to do it right, you should look at a year’s worth of every credit card and bank account you use. I recommend making a large spreadsheet of categories and each time you see an expenditure for a category put in the amount.  Total it all at the bottom and divide by 52.

It is often worthwhile to differentiate between your individual expenses and expenses for children as many of the latter can later be carved out and shared with your spouse on top of support.

A new case was decided this week which says if you regularly set aside savings during the marriage, you can add savings as an expense on your financial statement.

Email questions to whickey@brickjones.com