What documents you need for divorce, grouped by type

Every divorce asks for paper. Which paper, how many years of it, and by what date are set by the attorney handling the case and by the rules of the state where it is filed.

In Florida, divorce involves mandatory financial disclosure, and the Florida family law forms include a Certificate of Compliance with Mandatory Disclosure (Form 12.932). This page does not explain that form or any other. Your attorney will.

What follows holds almost everywhere. The documents are ordinary ones: statements, titles, returns, and agreements. The difficulty is that they sit in different drawers, inboxes, and offices, and a few of them are the only signed copy that exists.

Bring what you have to the first meeting, even if it is incomplete. A partial set with a written note of what is missing tells an attorney more than a promise to find everything later.

If a case is already open, read the notes for anyone facing disclosure as well.

Income records show what comes in and from where. Gather the recent ones and know where the older ones live.

If an accountant prepared your returns, ask that office for copies now. Ask while the request is routine.

Statements record both sides of the ledger. Some show what is held. Others show what is owed.

Collect them for every account either of you opened, including the ones you stopped using.

Most of these statements can be downloaded again from the institution, which makes a list of the accounts worth more than the statements themselves. A single page naming every account, the institution, the last four digits, and whose name is on it gives a first meeting with an attorney somewhere to start.

Property records are where originals start to matter. A statement can be printed again. A signed closing file from twenty years ago is harder to replace, and sometimes impossible.

A recorded deed also has a copy in county records. A vehicle or boat title has no such backup in your hands, and replacing one is its own errand. If yours are still in a desk drawer, see how deeds and titles are kept in the vault.

These papers are the oldest on the list and the easiest to lose. They also matter most to the person who signed them, or who brought the asset into the marriage.

An earlier divorce decree belongs here too. Whether it matters to the current case is for your attorney to judge. Your part is knowing where it is.

Retirement statements come from a plan administrator, not a bank, and the plan's own summary documents are separate from the balance statements. Identity papers are here because a divorce changes names and addresses, and the certificates that prove who everyone is are wanted in the same months as everything else.

Most of this list is paper you can print again. Some of it is not.

A signed prenup, a recorded deed, a vehicle title, an original will, and an appraisal signed by someone who has since retired each exist once. Keeping the prenup original in one place, with its exhibits still attached, removes the search that divorced clients tell us about most. The records that date an asset to before the marriage have their own page: what shows an asset was yours first.

The inventory matters as much as the box. When your attorney asks for the original deed to the house you bought in 2011, the answer should be a line on a signed list and a short visit, not an afternoon going through boxes in the garage.

Those originals belong in one place, on one signed list. At Florida Intervault in Fort Lauderdale, family-owned since 1983, intake includes an inventory of what goes into the box, and you keep a copy. Every renter is identified against government-issued photo ID, and every access is logged.

You do not have to live in Florida. You can mail your documents in, and we place everything in a box for you and mail the key back.

One plain fact. A box and what is in it are discoverable, and valid subpoenas and court orders are honored. That is the reason to use one, because documented custody with a date on it is evidence you want to be able to produce when disclosure asks for it, rather than a pile you have to explain.

A box is the wrong place for anything you still use every week. Current pay stubs, this month's statements, and the working copies your attorney asks for belong in a folder at home.

Contents are not FDIC insured, and neither are the contents of a bank's box. Insurance is arranged separately against a declared value. Boxes start at $795 a year. Call (954) 565-7233, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, or book a visit.