EP #11: Financial Clarity & Forensic Accounting with guest Ryan Finley

Financial fear is often the biggest driver of conflict in a divorce. Questions like "Is my spouse hiding money?" or "Can I afford my future?" can keep you paralyzed. In this episode of the Drama-Free Divorce Podcast, Cary Jacobson sits down with Ryan Finley, Founder of Freedom Financial Services Group.

Ryan is a CPA, Certified Divorce Financial Analyst (CDFA), and Forensic Accountant who helps families move from financial confusion to total clarity.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Forensic Accounting: What it actually looks like in a divorce context.
• Hidden Assets: Red flags to watch for and how to ensure transparency.
• Business Valuation: Why "splitting it down the middle" is rarely that simple.
• Budgeting for Divorce: How proactive planning reduces legal fees and emotional stress.
• Empowerment: How to stop feeling paralyzed and start making data-driven decisions.

About our Guest: Ryan Finley has over 20 years of experience in finance and forensic accounting, guiding hundreds of families nationwide toward financial confidence. Learn more at freedomfsg.com.

Visit jacobsonfamilylaw.com to learn more.

Visit jacobsonworkshop.com to learn more.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If your spouse is not disclosing everything to you, if it's not an open book, that's kind of an indicator that maybe I need to look into this because they're not showing me everything. Another good indicator is that if their lifestyle doesn't match their income, we had one client her husband was making consistently for five years, six years, between$750,000 and a million million dollars per year income. They had no assets. When we put together a murder balance sheet, there was no assets. So I'm asking the questions: how can you make this amount of money and not have anything? Well, where do you need that?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Welcome to the Drama Free Divorce Podcast. I'm your host, attorney and mediator Carrie Kickerson. Each week we bring you practical guidance, real conversations, and expert insights to help you navigate divorce with clarity, confidence, and less conflict. If you're ready for a calmer, more empowered path forward, you're in the right place. Welcome back to the Drama Free Divorce Podcast, where we help you navigate divorce with clarity, confidence, and less conflict. I'm your host, Carrie Jacobson, attorney and mediator with Jacobson Family Law. One of the most overwhelming parts of divorce is not just the emotions or the legal side, it's also the finances. Things like do I really know what I actually own? How much is this going to cost? And can I even afford to get divorced? Today's guest is someone who brings both clarity and calm to those questions. I'm joined by Ryan Finley, the founder of Freedom Financial Services Group, which is a divorce and finance advisory firm. And he helps families, attorneys, and courts navigate the financial complexities of divorce. Ryan is a CPA, a certified divorce financial analyst, as well as a certified valuation analyst. And he's even a mediator. With more than 20 years of experience in finance and forensic accounting, Ryan has guided hundreds of families nationwide toward financial clarity and confidence. And today he's going to talk about forensic accounting, hidden assets, financial transparency, budgeting for divorce, and how planning ahead can dramatically reduce stress and conflict. Ryan, thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Absolutely. Well, I always like to start with our guest. Let's talk about your background. What led you into this divorce space, even though you've been in finances for a long time?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

It's interesting how I got into it. It wasn't the most direct path. I was an auditor coming out of college and I worked in new business development for about 10 years. So buying and selling properties and evaluating properties. But I've I've been a financial professional for 30, 35 years, you know, and I've been in different roles as a like CFO and have operations and things like that. So I get to see the overall picture. But about five years ago, I had a friend that was a divorce coach. She had some questions. She was helping a couple of clients go through the divorce. And she said, We got some complicated financial situations here. She said, Would you mind looking at that? And so I looked at it, and if my background, I was able to kind of understand it and put it in terms that these non-financial people could understand. Just that kind of put my toe into the water on that. And then I started helping her out a little bit on the evenings and weekends and really enjoyed it. Realized that my background, all the different things that I've done to this point has really prepared me for this position. So I've been in this position about five years and got different certifications along the way. But I enjoyed really doing what I'm doing. I don't enjoy the divorce part of it. Right. It's the helping people, it's people in need that need help. They don't see that. They just see the people going through a divorce. People don't see this person that's in disarray that does know what's going on. And so it's self-fulfilling to help people enlighten them and clarify things and point them in the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Absolutely. And I think that's why so many professionals get into the divorce work because it is fulfilling to help others in one of the most challenging times of their lives. Now, I know that many people don't necessarily even realize that there are financial professionals that specialize in this work. How do you explain what you do to someone that's never heard of a certified divorce financial analyst?

SPEAKER_01 4:19

That's a great question. There's several different ways that I help people. So that we help them if they come to us directly. A lot of times, I would say a lot of our clients are non-financial spouse in the marriage. And so a lot of times they're not involved with the finances. And so they're raising the kids or doing, you know, uh other things. And the other spouse is, you know, taking care of the finances, the money. And so one of the things they do when they come to us, they don't have an idea of what they have and what they need and what this looks like. So, you know, if you put yourself in their situation, they're not used to dealing with the finance stuff. And then all of a sudden, their whole world gets turned upside down and they don't know what to do. So one of the ways we help is we help them gather their financial information. They we pull it all together and help them. You know, can you give me a copy of this? And we do it like a document request list, and then we'll put together a list of assets and liabilities, you know, and then a lot of them don't know what their living costs are, what they can. So we help them prepare a budget of what they spent the last 12 months or two years. Right. You know, this kind of and then that kind of gives them an idea of kind of what school for. Another way we help them is if a lot of times we help them with litigation support. So if they have an attorney, if they're going through discovery, we'll help them with discovery. If they're going through mediation, we'll sit next to them during mediation and kind of explain to them a lot of times. You know, I have a big screen that I display, and when I when I have my clients in, I put everything up on this big spreadsheet and they can see it. And it helps people to see their financial picture instead of just you know seeing it on paper. You know, and then you can walk them through. If this happens, then here's what we do. So another way I help is with the litigation support when helping the attorneys in complicated financial situations. I find hidden money. So that's kind of one that everybody when they hear forensic accounting, they say, Oh, you find a lot of money. And we do, you know, we find some, sometimes we don't. If somebody has misappropriated money, we will find when we don't find money. There's suspicion that there's things going on, and even when we don't find money, it's a good thing because it gives them peace of mind. Then they're back to trust because and their whole world, trust is gone. Right. Those are the ways that we help our clones.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

And that's such an important piece, you know. Sometimes there are scenarios where that, you know, the non-financial spouse just doesn't have an idea of what's going on, right? Like like you mentioned, they just haven't been the one involved. So sometimes it can be that they need education on what they have, what that means, what that is going to look like in the future. And sometimes it can be because they've, you know, they don't know what's happened. And so then they have that fear that there is something going on that they weren't aware of. And then yeah, and then finding, you know, whether or not that has actually happened can be very helpful.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

By the way, I love the name of your podcast, Keep the Drama Out of the Gorse. Because one of the main things, this is an emotional time for me. You've got somebody that's married, you know, to their best friend for 10, 15 years, and all of a sudden they're their best friends divorcing and suing. And then on top of having a lot of the financial situations, there's an emotion involved. There's kids, absolutely, financial pressure. It's like I love, you know, trying to keep the drama out of divorce because, and that's the one thing we try to do first. You know, it's like we're gonna make this a math problem. You know, we're gonna we're gonna remove the emotions out of it. If we're just looking at this math problem, how do we solve this? What do you need? How can we separate this to the best benefit for you? We try to take that drama out of it as well. So that, you know, in that way, you know, people can understand that it's hard to do because it's an emotional time. And the like, you know, we mentioned earlier, one of the things that I enjoy most again about it is when we come, when people come in, they're starting at ground zero and they don't know which case up. They don't know, you know, we just talked about confusion and your best friends do it and everything. And then as they process and as they learn, and as we clarify legal decisions and financial decisions and things, you can see their confidence built absolutely towards the end of the process. My one of my favorite things is just to see the self-confidence they have, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. This isn't the end of the world for them. There is another life after divorce. It's something that, you know, social and financially, legally, there's you know, there's life after this. And to see somebody, their confidence, self-confidence increase, and just to see, you know, that they're knowing my help with them is that they're I'm painting a financial picture where we're gonna be able to pay their bills and they're gonna have some assets and they're gonna be okay, you know. And so that's one of the things that I enjoy.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Absolutely. And to seeing that transition over time is a wonderful thing for sure. Now, what are some of the red flags that people should be looking for if they think assets may have been gone missing or that they, you know, maybe just aren't aware of something that whether it was intentional or not, they think they may be something, but they're not sure. What are those some of those red flags that they should be kind of considering?

SPEAKER_01 9:36

Well, oh, some of it's, you know, if your spouse is not disclosing everything to you, you know, if it's not an open book, that's kind of an indicator that, hey, maybe something, maybe I need to look into this because this they're not showing me everything. Yeah. I would say that's one, you know, moving financial brokers, things like that, changes in your financial situation. Some of the other ones are if one of the tools we like to do is we like to do like a comparative analysis of things that change. We look at like tax returns and things like that. We look at that, we look at you know, money moving back and forth. Another good indicator is that if their lifestyle doesn't match their income, we had one client her husband was making, you know, consistently for five years, six years, between$750,000 and a million million dollars per year income. They had no assets. When we put together their marital balance sheet, there was no assets. So I'm asking the questions. How can you make this amount of money and not have anything? She said, Well, we eat out a lot. Well, where do you eat out? I mean, go and play the me, you know, or it's like, you know, and that's the thing that is hard to do is sometimes to get people to open their eyes to see the things that are in front of them, just things that don't make sense. You know, we're making this amount of money and you know, we still owe this amount of the house, we don't have any in investments or 401 gauge or things like that. Proof and golly. So those are some of the things, indicators, I guess, that we're having.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

And just as important, sometimes clients, like you said before, don't even know what actually exists. What are some of the ways that you kind of help them just learn what they have, you know, in gathering that documentation?

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Well, one of the things that I like to do, one of the main exercises we do is I try to get their investment statements and bank statements and things, and we run it through some software that we have and we upload it and it spits it out into a spreadsheet. And so, like each bank account, we get a separate tab, and it's just it's an analysis of all the activity, and it'll tell us how much was spent, where it was spent, and so you know, kind of the category of it. So we'll go through and the thing I like to do is overlay those. And so, you know, you you end up putting them all in one spreadsheet, and you can track the money. So if we're moving money from our savings account to our living account, that should be going both ways. So you start tracking the cash, and I do it with colors, so I'll highlight it goes in this, it's red, and it goes back, it's purple. So it's easy to see when you see a lot of things that aren't coming back, then that's a good indicator that there's maybe there's something hitting. So then you start asking questions. So when we do that analysis, we work with the attorneys, and it's like, you know, we'll end up pulling a list of exceptions. This there may not be something going on here, attorney, but we'd like to ask these questions. Where did this hundred thousand dollars go? Where did the$75,000 go? Where did this deposit come from? Because there may find some hidden income, income, courses of income. It's not just money going out. Sometimes it's money coming in that we don't know what happened. Maybe hey-ho, have an investment in a business or a partnership that produces income that the spouse knows nothing about, you know, and those are some of the ways we do it. I like to do it that way. The attorneys take what we give them and ask the questions, and then that may feed up some more questions. On investments, we had a client that the husband kind of pre-planned the divorce. So about two years out, he started, he changed financial advisors, and then he changed them again, and so trying to follow that money through. And so they started off with five accounts here. There was five accounts over here, but we had to go beginning to ending balance. So in between moving five to five here, another one popped up somewhere else. And so we found that out. That was about a million and a half dollars we found to help this lady out. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 13:34

And from a legal perspective, I see how you know the lack of financial clarity, whether it's just not having the knowledge, not having the education, can cause conflict. You know, it sometimes it's just I'm scared to leave or I'm scared to pursue this divorce because I don't know if I can move on because I don't know if I'm gonna have the money to live after this, right? How can financial transparency kind of change the tone and even the outcome of some divorce negotiations?

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Well, that's a great question. Clarity is the key, and that's kind of what we do. As I mentioned earlier, we help them, we go through their income and expenses and help them create a budget on what their living expenses would be. And so we ask them, you know, to do this post-divorce. Project forward if you think you're gonna keep the house, what's your house payment, what's your insurance, your fuel? So we have them start looking at that. Then as far as the negotiations, trying to understand everything we have and making sure everybody's on the same page that what we're negotiating, we think they have is what they're trying to negotiate back to us. And so when it as I mentioned earlier, I have this big spreadsheet, and that helps because even when I'm working with attorneys, we're all looking at the spreadsheet and they'll hand it to me and they'll say, Ryan, can you put this in your format? We want to see what this looks like. Right. And I'm able to make changes on the fly quick. Well, this is the next proposal. What does that look like? And so we're able to type it in there and people can see it. And so it's it's much easier to make a decision when you've seen the impact of okay, if I give them this and I take this and then it's a trade-off, then how does that affect me? You know, and so you know, there's different ways. There's an allocation of assets and there's spousal support that it can be a combination of either to get them from the financial situation.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

I love when we're doing the financial projection in real time because I'm very much a visual learner and I know that it helps people really look at it's not it's no longer theoretical. Right. And in many times when we're doing mediation and we're having these negotiations, it's like, well, we're splitting half of the bank accounts, but what does that actually look like on paper? What does that mean for each of you? And so having that visualization is absolutely it's critical and very helpful.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Yeah, let me make one other point here. So one of the things as a CDFA that they teach us is let's say there's a million-dollar stock investment, and this is somebody's 401k retirement. So typically you would think if it's a million dollars, if I get a half million dollars and they get a half million dollars, then we're easy. That's not the case sometimes, because if I give you all my old stuff that I bought for$20 and I have the stock I bought for$80, and the stock price is$100 right now, you're gonna pay more taxes on it than I am. So, you know, that's one thing we look at when we advise. We're saying, okay, if we're gonna split this investment, let's split it by lots. Let's say we bought 20 lots back in 1990, I did 10 of those, you get 10 of those. And so that way it is a truly equal distribution of that investment.

SPEAKER_00 17:07

And I think that is important for those people who have more complex investments than you know, than otherwise we might typically see. Right, right. Now I know that one of the other things that you do is business and real estate valuation. Those are always complex situations. Can you explain a little bit more about why valuation of businesses and or real estate can, you know, really impact the negotiations and why splitting it down the middle may not be the best way?

SPEAKER_01 17:39

It certainly can't. And my niche has been in the last couple of years more evaluating the valuation. Does that make sense so you know, the husband will have a valuation, the wife will have a valuation, and I come in and kind of treat both of them and kind of give advice on which is, in my opinion, a more accurate valuation. And so where this is important, and especially in real estate, is there's a lot of partnerships. There's a lot of ways to hide money, ways if I'm self-employed, I could run things to the business. Most businesses, if you started the business during the marriage and grew the business, then that's a marital asset. Right. And so a lot of people try to devalue that asset so that they'll say, Well, you know, they're running personal expenses to her, and so show the net as lower. So they'll say, Well, okay, I keep the business, it's only valued in X, and you can have this, you know. And that way, and they're undervaluing the business by running all these expenses to her, and not showing the true accurate picture of what the valuation is. So if you take out those expenses and value it properly, then it's a whole lot more valuable, which means the other person's gonna get more of something else. Right. And so, you know, that's one of the things that I bring value to the attorneys and the whole situation. I feel like I'm pretty ejective on it. Um, real estate's another complicated thing, and I've got a long background in real estate. A lot of real estate, you have partnerships and you have they take land and then develop it and then they sell lots, and so there's value created. It may not be the value of the land, but there's value created. And so, you know, we had a case last year actually where I was representing the spouse of a developer, and he had all these different parcels, and he was said, Oh, well, that's not worth anything. And so we had to come back in and value the property. One of the things we did is he bought this big parcel of property, and I for the example. Six months later, they sold 50 of the acres, and then another another year they sold 20 acres, and then 10, and then another kid. And so it's like, so when they didn't disclose it, they said, Oh, we bought it, we sold it, we made this amount of money. And I'm like, Well, you're still messing 10 acres. Where's that other 10 acres at? And it's like, oh, you know, it's gone. We sold it all. So we tracked it down through sales records and property tax records and everything, and found out that that 10 acres was across from a Bucky's convenience store on the highway, and it was worth about four and a half million dollars. And so that was something that, you know, because of our diligence and our detail and our knowledge and the real estate, we were able to find that.

SPEAKER_00 20:15

It's absolutely very valuable if it's nearby a a Bucky's for sure. One of the biggest fears people have is how much is this gonna cost me? The cost of the divorce process itself, right? Can be really challenging because where are they gonna come up with the funds to hire the attorney, hire the financial advisor, hire the evaluator? So let's talk about budgeting for the divorce. What should people be thinking about before they initiate this process from a financial perspective?

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Several things. Let you mentioned, you know, what the attorneys would cost. I think it I don't think people have any idea how expensive a divorce is, you know. And I charge by the hour, and attorneys charge by the hour. They usually take a retainer and bill against that. I take a small retainer and bill against mine, but from a financial perspective, it it's if you look at it this way, I guess, you know, there's just from uh your monthly expenses, you know, you're taking one household and you're dividing it into. And so you're paying two mortgage payments or two rent payments, two utility bills, two insurance form, you know, two insurance, two cables. Everything's duplicated. Right. And then you've got attorney fees on that. You're paying attorney fees, they're paying attorney fees, and it's all coming out of the same pocket pretty much because it's your marital assets. I would talk to the attorneys on, you know, what they get an estimate from them, get an estimate. I think using somebody like me is a valuable resource. I think from peace of mind, I think there is a cost to it, but I think it's there's a good return on the investment, whether it's from a forensic accounting perspective or peace of mind, just knowing that, hey, if I need help from a financial perspective, negotiating this settlement. I need help to know what I need to live on and what assets we have, and what's a good allocation of that. I think it's a good investment for a financial perspective. The overall divorce, again, I don't think people have any idea how much that is. And the longer you draw it out, if you're able to speak with your spouse, I know you're Born through a divorce. I know you have differences. I know you have kids. But if you're able just to come together and you know take the drama out of the divorce and just talk to each other, it's more affordable. You're able to keep more assets post-divorce and it's a better process, you know. I get some people that they want to fight. You know, they were cheated on. They they want they it's not really sometimes they don't even worry about protecting their assets, and that's something I'm trying to advise them on. They want, they're angry. Okay, I get that, but do you realize what fighting is going to cost you? Because if this goes to trial or if we do a dissipation analysis or we do things like that, it gets expensive quickly. I try to help people and I give them advice to go. We don't give legal advice. I just say go speak to multiple attorneys. You know, if you want to fight, you will find an attorney that wants to fight. If you want to negotiate, here's an attorney that wants to negotiate. But find one that matches up with what your goal in this is.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

Absolutely. Because the attorney you choose or the process you choose is going to make a difference of how much you're going to spend in the long run. And one of the ways that we try to reduce those costs is by keeping those cases out of court and trying to resolve them amicably, whether it's through negotiation or mediation. And the other thing that we have found that really helps clients kind of know going into the process and budgeting from a financial standpoint is offering flat fees as opposed to that hourly method, because they really do know going into it, well, this is what it's going to be. And many times, as you mentioned, you know, they're paying those fees together out of the same pot instead of, especially for mediation, instead of each having their own, you know, each having to pay attorney. So they're in end up paying less than if they were hiring two attorneys and negotiating it that way.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

That's great. I wish more attorneys would do that. I really do.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah. I mean, it really helps our clients know what they're looking at. Now, obviously, from our perspective, it's sometimes that benefits us and sometimes it doesn't. But in the long run, we try to encourage our clients to communicate and just found that really when doing the hourly method, especially for attorneys, so many clients were hesitant to send the email, to make the phone call, have the meeting because they were afraid of getting that bill each month. Yeah. And, you know, they just didn't want to have that communication that helped resolve their case because of the method. Yeah, no, I know that you work with people at one of the most stressful times of their lives. And back to that building confidence, right? What does financial empowerment really mean during divorce?

SPEAKER_01 25:11

I think what that means is, and I'll just use a typical example we have. We take somebody that's not familiar with their finances, somebody that's we'll say ground zero on financial picture. That means educating them, gathering their information, you know, painting a clear picture of what their financial situation is, and then letting them know that post-divorce, they're going to be okay. Here's what you're here's what you need to live on. Here's how we're going to get that. They may work, they may not work. You know, here's what you make on your job. Here's what your child support would be. Here's what we're asking for in spouse's support. You know, and there could be other ways too. If there's a if the family has an income-producing property, we may say, okay, we may not get it there, but let's ask for this property. It produces$4,000 a month in rent. Let's ask for that. So we put, like I said earlier, it's like solving a math problem. We try to help them get to where they need to be to still have some assets down the road where they're not spending everything in the next two years to keep the house. This is a continuous budget that you're able to maintain. Plus, you have some investments that down the road, you know, once the kids are in school and things like that, you can use those investments for a life later. But the financial clarity thing at the end of this at the end of the divorce is having them come to you and say, Thank you. I'm gonna be okay financially. I appreciate you know your input. And as you mentioned earlier, one of the things that I tell them a lot is what makes this real difficult is the emotion that you're going through. So again, you've got all this emotional stuff going on with the kids and the situation and the neighbors and friends and things like that. Let's make this financial decision. Let's say that this person's name is Becky. This is the business of Becky. We're gonna take all the emotion out of this and we're gonna make a decision as if this is a business. What would you do if this was your business? And so, you know, they go, well, you know, I would do this and this. And that way it takes the emotion up.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

And it's such a can be a difficult thing to do, but when you approach it in that business-like manner, it does help have more clear decision making for sure.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yeah. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for being here today. This has been such an important conversation. Financial clarity truly can change everything from how people negotiate to how they heal and actually move forward. For our listeners, where can they find more information about you and your services?

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Well, thank you for having me, Kara. I've enjoyed it. I've really appreciated it. They can reach me. The best way to reach me is on my website. It's www.freedomfsg.com. And if they I've got a they'll go to my website there, there's a schedule a consultation button and they'll click that and they'll fill out a form, and then we'll it sends us information. So when we reach back out to them, we know a little bit about the situation and we can have a good talk with them. Also, phone number is 941-945-2846.

SPEAKER_00 28:11

Wonderful. We'll be sure to include those in the show notes. And if anyone found our episode today helpful, be sure to subscribe to the Drama Free Divorce Podcast, leave us a review, and share this episode with a friend. For more resources or support, be sure to check out our website, which is jacobsonfamilylaw.com. Thanks so much for being here. Thanks for listening to the Drama Free Divorce Podcast. If you found today's episode helpful, be sure to follow, subscribe, and share it with someone who needs it. For more resources or to work with us, visit jacobsonfamilylaw.com. Until next time, stay grounded, stay informed, and stay drama free.