Law firms routinely retain private investigators to conduct asset investigations. As an investigator who conducts these investigations frequently, I oftentimes see a fatal flaw. Clients don’t request a parallel investigation on the spouse, and private investigators many times don’t expand their scope of work to include the target’s spouse.
Why is this important? In most states, a judgement against an individual can extend to assets held by the spouse. What’s more? It’s not uncommon to discover that public records are indexed under the spouse’s name first and therefore may not come up or be readily accessible under the target’s name. As a general research strategy, an investigator should consider researching the target and their spouse separately as if conducting two separate asset investigations.
Here’s an example. Earlier today I was researching the assets of a man. While researching records held by the county recorder under his name, a deed of trust and a huge HOA lien that existed was not discovered. However, upon searching the man’s spouse through the same county recorder, I quickly identified the documents in question. I obtained copies of the documents from the recorder, and both the target and his spouse were named in the documents. Had I not searched both names, this critical information would have been missed.
When it comes to research, your search methodology is critical. Take time to gather all pertinent names/identities and keywords prior to starting. Always map out the investigation prior to beginning when possible. This will not only ensure that you conduct a thorough investigation, but it will make things much easier.