Your case assumes the figures on the affidavit are real. Sometimes they are not.
Financial Fact-Check · two directions
Before you disclose, and after they do.
The same arithmetic runs both ways. One direction tells you what your own records
say before you swear to anything. The other tells you whether what they handed
you is complete. Most men only think to do the second. They find out too late that a
problem in their own numbers would have been far cheaper to fix.
First step · your own documents
Know what your records say before they become evidence.
Everything you are about to disclose is already true. The only
question is whether you know it before the other side does.
Complete the affidavit from the records, not from memory. Most of the
errors in a sworn financial affidavit are honest ones — a forgotten account,
an average mistaken for a month, a side income nobody categorized.
Find what you would have to produce, before you are asked. Every account,
every payment app, every card. If it exists, it is discoverable.
See your own pattern the way a reader will. The same categorization and
averaging that gets applied to the other side gets applied to you.
Fix what is fixable while it is still early. An explanation offered up
front reads very differently from one produced under cross-examination.
What you end up withYour own numbers organized, so that you and
your lawyer can complete the affidavit accurately — and a file that is already
in order when the request for production arrives.
Second step · the other parent's documents
Check the sworn affidavit against what the records show.
A financial affidavit is signed under oath. Bank statements, tax
returns and pay stubs are not opinions — they either support the sworn figures
or they do not.
Every figure traced to a document and a page. Not an impression of a
discrepancy — a citation.
Income that does not arrive as a paycheck. Contractor payouts through apps like
Venmo, PayPal and Stripe, matched to the deposits in the bank statements.
The expense side, categorized. Card statements sorted by where the money
went and averaged by month, so what is claimed can be compared with what is
actually spent.
A second year turns a month into a pattern. The cheapest part of the
whole product, because the work is already built by then.
What you end up withA document-cited reconciliation
of a sworn affidavit against the records behind it, checked by a person against the
source documents before it ships.
What both directions are built from
Bank statementsEvery account, all pages — including the ones with nothing on them
Tax returnsFull returns, every schedule, every W-2 and 1099 attached
Pay stubsEvery stub in the period, not a sample
Peer-payment historyFull transaction history, both directions
Income that isn’t a paycheckContractor payouts through apps like Venmo, PayPal and Stripe
Card statements (optional)Twelve months if you have them, for the expense side of the affidavit
Complete sets, not selections. A missing month is where the argument
goes — and that is as true of your own file as it is of theirs.
Financial Fact-Check
The affidavit is sworn. The statements are the record. The gap is the case.
A financial affidavit is signed under oath. Bank statements, tax returns and pay stubs are
not opinions — they are records, produced in discovery, that either support the sworn
figures or they don’t. A Financial Fact-Check puts the two side by side and cites the
document behind every line. Below is what one looks like: the Affidavit and Return vs. Records tabs of the summary workbook that comes with Prove The Number and Both Sides, Two Years. Upload the affidavit with your records and every line is checked; without one, the workbook shows what the records say each line should be.
Every figure on this page is invented. This is a worked illustration and example of
the format, not anyone’s case. No real name, employer, institution, account or amount appears
anywhere in it.
Tap any line to see the document it came from. Lines that
agree with the affidavit are shown faded — most of them do.
Affidavit line
Sworn
Documented
Variance
Income, monthly
Gross salary or wages
$2,000
$8,200
+$6,200
Document behind this lineTwenty-six pay stubs across two employers. The year-to-date figure printed on the final stub of each year confirms the annual total independently of the individual stubs.
Bonuses, commissions, overtime
$0
$415
+$415
Document behind this lineSeparate earnings codes appear on fourteen of the twenty-six stubs. The affidavit answers this line “none.”
Business or self-employment income
$0
$1,340
+$1,340
Document behind this lineOne hundred and two payment-processor payouts deposited into the operating account over twenty-four months, each traceable to a payout reference number.
Total monthly income
$2,000
$9,955
+$7,955
Expenses, monthly
Rent or mortgage payment
$3,100
$1,950
−$1,150
Document behind this lineA single recurring debit, same payee and same day each month, unchanged for twenty-two of the twenty-four months in the period.
Groceries and household supplies
$1,400
$690
−$710
Document behind this lineCard transactions categorized by merchant, then averaged on a three-month rolling basis so that a single large shop does not distort the figure.
Child care
$900
$0
−$900
Document behind this lineNo debit to any child-care provider appears anywhere in twenty-four months of statements, in any of the accounts produced.
Automobile payment
$680
$680
matches
Document behind this lineRecurring transfer to the lender on the same date each month. This line matches the affidavit exactly — most lines do, and saying so is what makes the lines that do not matter.
Health insurance
$420
$418
matches
Document behind this linePayroll deduction itemized on every stub. Matches the sworn figure within two dollars.
Total monthly expenses
$6,500
$3,738
−$2,762
Monthly surplus or (deficit)
($4,500)
$6,217
+$10,717
Sworn position
−$4,500
A monthly deficit, on the face of the affidavit
Documented position
+$6,217
A monthly surplus, on the records
The swing
$10,717
$128,604 a year, and every dollar of it traceable to a page
Income reported on the filed returns, against income identified in the statements. Money
received from the other parent is excluded, because support payments are not the
recipient’s income — counting them would inflate the gap and the analysis would
deserve to be thrown out.
Year one
Total income reported on the return
$27,200
All external credits into the accounts produced
$186,000
Less: Payments from the other parent — support and children’s expenses
($61,200)
Less: Credits under $100
($1,800)
Income identified in the records
$123,000
+$95,800
The records show about 4.5 times the income the return reports.
Year two
Total income reported on the return
$106,000
All external credits into the accounts produced
$188,400
Less: Payments from the other parent — support and children’s expenses
($72,000)
Less: Credits under $100
($2,100)
Income identified in the records
$114,300
+$8,300
Reconciles. The records and the return agree within about $8,300.
Notice that one year reconciles. That is the point. An analysis that finds a problem
in every year of every case is not an analysis — it is an argument wearing a
spreadsheet. The years that agree are what make the year that doesn’t worth reading.
Where thirty transfers actually went
The statements show thirty outgoing peer-to-peer transfers, totaling about $21,800,
addressed to a payee whose display name matches the filer’s own. The question a Financial Fact-Check
has to answer is narrow: did that money land in one of the accounts
produced in discovery, or in one that wasn’t?
All thirty originate from the same account. Every one is drawn from the spending account, never from any of the four savings accounts.
No matching credit appears anywhere in the records produced. Each credit across all five accounts was checked for a same-date, same-amount match. None of the thirty has one.
Transfers between the produced accounts do not look like this. Money moving among the five accounts posts as an internal transfer. It never posts as a peer payment, so the label on the transaction distinguishes the two by itself.
The flow runs both directions. Alongside the thirty outgoing payments, roughly twenty incoming deposits arrive from the same payee name — which is consistent with an account under the same control, not a payment to a third party.
None of the thirty has a matching credit in any account produced. Transfers to a name matching the holder’s own are listed separately; where the money landed is not something these records show.
And here is what the analysis cannot tell you. Statements record
only the payee’s display name — not the receiving institution and not the account
number. That detail sits in the bank’s own transfer records and comes out by subpoena,
not by analysis. A reading that claimed more than this would not survive the first
cross-examination, which is why it doesn’t.
What it is built from
One full year, every category below.
Bank statements, the tax return and pay stubs are required; card and peer-payment history are optional. Complete sets, not selections — a missing month is where the argument goes. A second year is what turns “that was an unusual month” into a pattern. It comes with Both Sides, Two Years, or can be added after delivery from your account.
Bank statementsTwelve months, every account, all pages — including the ones with nothing on them
Tax returnOne full return, with all schedules and every W-2 and 1099 attached
Pay stubsEvery stub in the twelve months, not a sample
Peer-payment statementsFull transaction history, both directions
Income that isn’t a paycheckContractor payouts through apps like Venmo, PayPal and Stripe
Card statements (optional)Twelve months if you have them, for the expense side of the affidavit
How to start. Your records travel one way only — through the Upload records page that appears in your account the moment you buy the Prove The Number or Both Sides, Two Years package. Never send documents by email.
See the actual deliverableBoth files below are real outputs of the analysis engine, produced by the same code
that would run on a real case. Every figure in them is invented — they show the format
and the standard of citation, not anyone’s case.
Both files arrive with three detailed workbooks — Bank Analysis,
Pay Stub Analysis and Credit Card Analysis — the transactions, pay stubs and card charges that every figure in
the summary is built from, and an Income Summary that sets the tax return against the income in the statements.
A1Click any cell. Cells with a blue outline hold a formula.
This is the workbook, not a picture of one. Every value above was
computed by the formula behind it — click a cell to read the formula. The file you
receive is an .xlsx you can open, sort and check in Excel, Numbers or Sheets.
How it runs
1
Upload
Records go through the upload page in your account — never through email. They are stored privately and deleted 90 days after delivery.
2
Parse
Every statement is read line by line and normalized — dates, payees, amounts, categories — so the figures can be compared against the affidavit.
3
Reconcile
Each sworn line is matched to the records behind it. Lines that agree are marked as agreeing. Lines that do not are quantified for you and your lawyer.
4
Review
A person checks every line against the source documents before anything is delivered. A number that is going into a filed document does not leave here unchecked.
Disclaimer. A Financial Fact-Check is a document analysis, not legal
advice and not an accounting opinion. It reports what the records show and what they don’t.
Whether a variance matters in your case, and what to do about it, is a question for your lawyer.
All of it is still ahead of you.
When you are ready
Two tiers include a Financial Fact-Check — one party, or both.
Prove The Number package — one full year of records, for one party. You choose which party: your own affidavit set against your own documents, or the other parent’s set against theirs.Both Sides, Two Years package — two full years of records, for both parties. Your financial analysis and the other parent’s, side by side. Multiple accounts and business entities are included, and there is no year add-on left to buy.Buy either one and you can upload your records right away.See both packages →
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One name, everywhere.
Same handle on every platform, so you never have to guess which account is the real
one. What gets posted is the same thing this site is: what the law actually says, and what
it is worth in nights.
@thedadsstandardTen platforms · one handle · pick the one you already use
Follow along
One name, everywhere.
Same handle on every platform, so you never have to guess which account is the real one. What gets posted is the same thing this site is: what the law actually says, and what it is worth in nights.