When you get a divorce, you want to make sure you receive the assets and benefits you're owed as a result of your years of marriage. Unfortunately, your soon-to-be ex will typically want to prevent you from getting any money and property they feel rightfully belongs to them and will go to great lengths to hide those assets from you. One thing you can do to prevent your ex from getting away with this is to hire a digital investigation team. Here are two ways they can help.

1. Locate Hidden Assets

If your spouse is going to go through the trouble of hiding money and assets, chances are pretty good they will use an electronic device to do it. While your ex can use a variety of methods and apps to help cover their tracks, a digital investigation team will also have a variety of tools they can use to obtain the information your ex attempted to delete or hide.

For instance, most people don't know that deleting items from a hard drive doesn't actually remove it from the device. The delete button only removes the active link to the item. The deleted information can still be recovered using the right software. So, even though your ex may think they're being clever by removing all of their files from the family computer, you can see what they were trying to hide by handing the device over to a recovery expert.

The information can then be used to force your ex to produce the assets they were trying to hide, which ensures you'll receive your fair share.

2. Preserve and Certify Important Evidence

Another area where a digital expert can help is in reconstructing, preserving, and certifying important evidence so that it will be accepted by the court. The judge won't allow evidence to be presented in your case if there is some question as to its veracity. For example, if a photo looks like it could have been faked, the court won't let you use it.

Thus, an important service a digital investigator can provide is to protect the evidence chain as well as validate the authenticity of the items recovered. In addition to that, the investigators can produce a court-ready report you can use to bolster your claims. For instance, if you're claiming your spouse cheated on you, the company can provide a report showing all the emails, chats, text messages, and other evidence you need to support your allegations.

For more information about how digital investigations teams can help you, contact a local provider.