While it may seem that your lawyer is asking for a lot of detail, and while it may be inconvenient to provide this detail, it can be very important to provide the details that a lawyer is asking for.

    While you may know what you mean when you refer to “the insurance reserve account,” if it is necessary to refer to it in court documents, it will be helpful for the lawyer to have the full account number.

    One reason for this is that a credit report might refer to an account by the first several numbers, while reporting only Xs for the last four digits, while some other source might refer to accounts by only their last four digits.

    Another reason for this is that the lawyer will probably want to identify the account by its full number in court filings that are sealed from the public, so that there can be no doubt as to which account is being referred to in documents such as the Judgment of Dissolution of Marriage, which actually divide the assets.

    Similarly, VIN numbers can be very important.  A Judgment of Dissolution of Marriage (formerly called a Divorce Decree) will usually operate to convey title to a vehicle, if necessary, if the VIN numbers are included in the Judgment.  This can make it unnecessary to have the other side sign over a car after a divorce, which sometimes can be very helpful.

    A license plate number, while it may be useful for some things (including finding a person to serve them with legal papers), will NOT operate to convey title.

    Other kinds of information can often be provided by a person as well.  For example, it is often necessary to determine the value of a vehicle, so that a fair distribution of assets can be achieved.  Usually the best way to determine the value is to go to Kelley Blue Book (KBB.com) and find the private party retail value for a vehicle of that kind, with the same options and in the same condition as the actual vehicle owned by the parties.  Usually a client can produce a far more accurate blue book value than the lawyer can, because the client usually knows what options a car has (or can find this out by simply looking at the car), and usually the client can also accurately determine the condition of the car.

    While the lawyer may be able to get these details from the other side, it can be very expensive and time consuming to do this if the other side does not cooperate.  Even if the other side does cooperate, the lawyer time involved in one lawyer contacting the other lawyer, and then the other lawyer gathering the information and passing it back to the first lawyer, can consume significant resources.

    You should not, of course, improperly obtain information about your spouse to give to the lawyer, but if you have access to bank records and other documents, much of the information can often easily be located.  Similarly, even if a vehicle is being driven by your estranged spouse, there is a good likelihood that you may remember sufficient details about the vehicle that you can produce a good value by going to KBB.com and following the prompts on that web site.

    For all of these reasons, giving as much information as possible, rather than giving partial information that either delays matters, or that results in the lawyer needing to review material to locate the information himself, or that results in the lawyer having to follow up with you multiple times seeking such information, can substantially reduce both time and costs involved in many divorces.