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My husband handled all the finances during our marriage.

He had an affair, and I’m worried that he was spending our money on his affair parter. Where do I start?

Answered By

Tracy Coenen, CPA, CFF

Forensic Accountant and Fraud Investigator at Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting

Question

My husband handled all the finances during our marriage. He had an affair, and I’m worried that he was spending our money on his affair parter. Where do I start?

Answer

Start by getting your hands on account statements for any account that you have legal access to. If your name is on a bank account, credit card, or investment account, you can get those statements without your spouse’s permission. Get access to online banking and start downloading all of the statements. Save them in a safe place such as Dropbox or Google Drive so that you will always have access to them. Eventually you will want to look at those statements line-by-line to see if there is spending that looks like it’s related to affair activities. But your first step is downloading those statements right away… in case your name is ever taken off the accounts and you lose access to them.