When it’s Time to Call a Private Investigator
Wedding bells. Happy smiles. Congratulations from relatives and guests. Long-awaited firstborn crying. And unfortunately, sometimes divorce. It is no secret that the consequences of the divorce of a married couple affect the children. It is the kids who suffer the most. And it does not only affect their mental state. But also, the lack of sufficient resources for their development. Sometimes families with many children come to the brink of existence. They can face starvation! And in the meantime, the negligent father entertains himself three times a year with girls on the white beaches of Mexico. And you can’t hold that against him. According to his annual tax returns, the father earns less than $20,000 a year as a self-employed businessman. He can barely make ends meet himself. But that’s not the case.
The good thing is that there are private investigation agencies such as Wolf Group. Thankfully, any woman that finds herself in a difficult situation similar to the one described above, has the possibility to work with a private investigator. When one of such women contacted Wolf Group, we already knew what to do. After their morning coffee (our little daily ritual), investigators wrapped themselves in scarves and took up observation positions. The other specialists zealously got to work on the documents.
Alimony: Revealing the Hidden Truth
And here’s the fun part: it turns out that the father’s restaurant business was booming. To cover his tracks, he opened three companies in two different provinces. He was making bank transfers with unsubstantiated invoices from one of his companies to another. He also cheated on the tax differentials between provinces. The father even employed nonexistent contractors. He even made the tax authorities interested in him. The results of the investigation formed the basis of the indictment. Of course, the ex-wife received the necessary money for the children, which they needed so much.
Unfortunately, many careless fathers resort to all sorts of tricks with the sole purpose – of not paying child support or paying as little as possible. What should a mother do when there is the concealment of income for alimony payments and how to prove these facts? These and other questions are answered in this article.
The Dirty Tricks to Help Reduce Child Support Payments
When the court established a deduction of alimony, unscrupulous fathers resort to the following methods of concealing their income in payment of alimony:
A formal change of employment to a job with lower wages.
Here, the father quits the job at which he earns a good wage and takes a job at a substantially lower wage.
Reducing the wage at the existing job
After a court order to collect child support payments, the payer remains employed at his previous job. But his wages are suddenly reduced, and child support payments are as well.
Dismissal without further formal employment
The payer quits his job and is not officially employed again but can still register at the Employment Center.
Formal alienation of property belonging to the taxpayer
The payer owned real estate, cars, and other expensive property. However, after the established payments, he gives it away or sells it at a reduced price to relatives and trustees.
What Private Investigators Can Do
Investigators have a wide enough range of tools to establish the real financial situation of the alimony payer. They can send inquiries to establish the following circumstances:
All possible places of official employment of the debtor; The real level of salary received by the alimony holder, based on data from the tax service, and pension fund; The availability of bank accounts and the amount of money in them; The availability of credit commitments and monthly payments; Existence of ownership of the real estate, as well as vehicles according to the authorities.
After obtaining the requested information, a private detective can get an idea of the income the payer receives each month. If it is possible to confirm a much higher level of income regularly received by the debtor, the bailiff can summon them to his office. Hiding an income and evading alimony may result in the payer being held criminally liable.
Difficult But Still Possible
It is very difficult to obtain evidence that reliably confirms the fact that the alimony payer is concealing his true earnings. Most decisions on such claims of mothers are rejected. But if the claimant still decides to prove the fact of the father’s evasion of his alimony duties, we recommend the following ways to obtain evidence.
If, when contacting a detective, as described previously, the latter was able to obtain any documents about the financial situation of the payer, it is necessary to ask the bailiff to issue certified copies of the documents, to provide them as evidence.
When the father works somewhere without official registration, you should initially try to contact the head of this organization and explain the situation. When they do not wish to cooperate, you can file a complaint with the labour inspectorate. The latter, conducting an inspection, can record the fact of employment without registration. The results of such an inspection can serve as evidence of concealment of wages.
The Official and the Unofficial
A very common situation happens when an alimony payer gets different amounts of salary, on paper and in reality. However, deductions for alimony are from the official amount. If there is reason to believe that the payer receives another amount under the table, you can contact the tax inspection to conduct an audit. The results of such an audit will help confirm the underestimation of wages. In addition, if the alimony payer has a small official salary, you can support your claims by the fact that with such a salary, alimony for children is much lower than the subsistence level in the province. Therefore, to respect the interests of the children and ensure their proper standard of living, it is necessary to determine a fixed amount of alimony.
If a former spouse acquires expensive things, be it a car, an apartment, or another real estate, in the name of his relatives, you can try to prove to the court that all this was acquired with the hidden income of the alimony. To do this, it is necessary to provide evidence that the income, for example, of retired parents, is clearly not enough to purchase an apartment.
Digging Deep and Checking the Background
The former spouse may have credit obligations, and monthly payments which significantly exceed the alimony payments, but the debtor pays them faithfully and in full, although his official income is clearly not enough for this. To confirm this, you need to provide evidence of such credit obligations, the number of monthly payments, as well as the absence of any delays. You can also ask the bank for a statement of income of the payer. The bank might be provided with a real income, while it is understated for alimony payments. By evaluating this data in the aggregate, the court may conclude that the payer clearly hides his sources of income.
The payer is the founder of legal entities or manages some of them, but according to the documentation, his income is low. You need to try to prove that before the payer’s profits were much higher and after the court’s decision to collect funds for the maintenance of the child, they fell sharply. There are no objective reasons for the decrease in profits for legal entities.
Every Detail Matters
If the payer, holding a position that requires education and high qualifications, receives a knowingly understated official salary, you can provide the court with information on the average monthly salary of specialists in the industry, where the alimony payer is employed. It is possible to obtain such information from the regional Chamber of Commerce.
Providing the court with evidence of the debtor’s property, which allows him to receive additional income. Many wealthy fathers, who have the right to ownership of commercial real estate or other property, provide the bailiff with statements of very low income. However, the very fact of owning commercial property implies using it specifically for making a profit. If this property, according to the alimony payer, is not making a profit after the court order, it makes it possible to validate the fact of concealment of such profits.
Ways to obtain evidence
To obtain the evidence described previously, you will need to contact the individuals and organizations that have the necessary information or can get it during the appropriate checks. You should keep in mind that not all agencies and organizations will provide the necessary documentation. It may contain personal data, the disclosure of which is not allowed by law.
The Court Takes Into Consideration Every Single Aspect
But even at our request, not all the information necessary to protect the interests of children is provided. You can attach all received refusals to provide with the claim and petition the court demanding the necessary information. The fact that the plaintiff tried to obtain the documents on their own but was denied is good motivation.
After receiving the documents at the request of the court, it will be possible to familiarize yourself with them. And, depending on their content, it is possible to form a further position on the case. Unfortunately, before the receipt of the documents, their content is unknown, so it is impossible to predict whether they will contribute to proving the facts of income concealment.
If you prove to the bailiff or the court that the father intentionally understates or conceals his income, it is possible to bring him to criminal liability. The amount and method of alimony payments may be revised as well.