Don't Invite Identity Theft in Your Florida Divorce Court File

Every Florida divorce requires financial information be exchanged by the parties. At a minimum, the court file will have a Financial Affidavit from both of you. One of the most common mistakes DIYers make is to provide too much information in their Financial Affidavits and Mandatory Disclosure. Remember, court records are open to the public in Florida. Don't invite identity theft by filing papers with your confidential information on them.

With the exception of the required Notice of Social Security Number if you have kids, never file any paper that has your confidential information on it with the Clerk. The law says the SSN notices are not open to the public, so anyone looking at your court file will not be able to see that notice. The rest of your file can be seen by anyone who asks to see it.

Florida's Sunshine law allows anyone to look at court records, take notes, even ask for copies from your file. Even if your complete information is not on one page, by looking through a DIYer divorce court file it's possible to piece together enough information about you to steal your identity.

Here's what you can do to avoid identity theft in your Florida divorce:

On your Financial Affidavit, list your accounts with only the last four digits of your account number. Do not provide pay stubs or other papers with your Social Security number still visible. I personally use a Sharpie black permanent marker to black out SSNs and account numbers. Even though it bleeds through the page, it does the best job of blocking the information. Even better is to use the black marker and then copy the document. This eliminates the possibility of reading through the back of the document.

For Mandatory Disclosure, Rule 12.285 only requires that the Certificate of Compliance is filed with the Clerk. The form Certificate allows you to check off the items you provide to the other side. This is another example where adding information to the "official" form is good. List the documents you provide and include the month and year of each document on the Certificate of Compliance. For example, on the certificate you would type "Sun Trust checking #3456 12/07, 1/08, 2/08" for your checking account.

You have to give copies of your financial account statements to your spouse and you are entitled to copies of theirs, but only the Certificate of Compliance is filed in the court file. For any non-joint accounts, you'll want to follow the black marker method when giving copies of your Mandatory Disclosure.

If you realize that this information is already in your court file, request that it be removed by the Clerk. At minimum, the clerk will need a list of the specific information you want removed and the case number. Some Clerks have a form for this request. Contact your local Clerk for more information on local procedures.