Divorce Financial Umpire
What is a Divorce Financial Umpire?
A Divorce Financial Umpire is a highly skilled financial forensic expert that has decades of experience in family law litigation and mediation performing a wide range of financial analysis on various financial issues in divorce cases. A Divorce Financial Umpire is uniquely skilled in not only the analysis of the financial issues but in communicating these complex concepts, identifying the important issues and helping parties to settle cases. A truly excellent Divorce Financial Umpire will quickly understand the important financial issues and will provide likely outcomes with a no-nonsense approach. It is important to note that Divorce Financial Umpires are not attorneys and cannot make legal rulings or help with legal paperwork. Divorce Financial Umpires get the best results when working with clients through their attorneys or mediators.
Karen Kaseno can act as your Divorce Financial Umpire. Because of her experience of over 30 years, her unique skill set to be able to understand complex financial issues, and her no-nonsense approach to advising attorneys and clients, Ms. Kaseno as a Divorce Financial Umpire can help you in many ways to resolve your case. Ms. Kaseno can work as a Divorce Financial Umpire on cases throughout the United States. Specifically, as a Divorce Financial Umpire Ms. Kaseno can provide the following services:
- Divorce Financial Umpire Services for litigation cases that need a financial neutral to provide his/her independent opinions- These are litigation cases that usually have their own teams of attorneys and financial experts and want neutral financial opinions prior to trial. In these cases both sides provide briefs, evidence and expert reports for the Divorce Financial Umpire to consider and provide recommendations on property and support issues.
- Divorce Financial Umpire services where you want a second set of eyes and observations-sometimes you have a difficult, complex case where you need a second set of eyes looking at the financial issues to decide how to proceed or what the case actually looks like to a neutral financial person. These services are usually performed as a consultant for one party in the litigation.
- Coaching Services- Sometimes you get too busy, the case gets too big, or deadlines get moved up and you need a skilled forensic to come in “off the bench” to help behind the scenes as a consultant. We can work with the financial experts you already have in place like other CPA’s, CDFA’s, CFP’s, etc. with their analysis of financial issues in divorce.
- Financial Issues Case Management Services- Some cases need a financial issues manager that can also be the forensic consultant on the case. These are usually very large high-net worth cases that require a lot of case management relating to the financial issues. We can work with your paralegals, office clerks, junior attorneys and other experts to develop a game plan for discovery, analysis and presentation of complex financial information.
- Umpire Services Within a Mediation- We can meet with both spouses with or without attorneys or can assist the mediator in working with the parties to obtain answers to their financial issues and help the parties with their settlement of financial issues. We can work directly with the two parties to get the financial issues analyzed and presented. Since we are not attorneys we recommend that parties either work with a mediator or have their own attorney/consulting attorney to help with the legal issues.
- Rebuttal Expert- We can review reports prepared by other financial experts and provide a rebuttal letter/report as to errors, different ways to approach the financial issues or other things to think about. We can do this as a consultant (just for you) or to be provided as rebuttal testimony to a trier of fact (trial, settlement conference, arbitration, or mediation).
- Your Secret Weapon- if you want to have a high level, experienced forensic expert with good litigation and common sense we can work with you behind the scenes as your advisor.
Karen Kaseno as a Divorce Financial Umpire Outside of California
Ms. Kaseno’s practice is in California and her experience has been mostly with California cases and case law. However, she can apply her unique skill set to a financial forensic case anywhere in the world. This has worked well on both one-sided or joint cases in other states. We will accept the case law/statutes as stated and provide the same level of experience and no-nonsense approach to fighting to get answers and strategies that help to settle simple or complex financial matters.
Do we Have to Meet in Person?
No! We are in 2021 now and everyone is learning to conduct meetings and even mediations and arbitrations on Zoom or another platform like Zoom. We can conduct all of our meetings and conferences virtually.
What is the hourly rate for Divorce Financial Umpire Services?
Ms. Kaseno’s hourly rate for Divorce Financial Umpire Services is $385-$450 per hour. We know that this might sound like a lot especially if you are outside of California. But if you use our services as outlined above you will be adding a benefit to your case or your client’s case that helps to get to answers quickly and to help in negotiating a settlement. Our staff rates for any detailed analysis or work ranges from $75-$250 per hour.
How Do We Bill and How Can You Get Started?
We offer a free 30-minute consultation so that we can interview each other and see if we are right for your case and to see if I have availability to help you. After the 30 minute consultation we will set a retainer fee based upon the expected level of work. Our minimum retainer is $4,500. We work on a retainer-replenishment basis where we will ask for the retainer to be replenished at certain times.
How Can I Get More Information for Myself or My Client?
I am one of the featured contributors on the Pocket Experts.solutions website. For a membership fee of $299 you or your clients can join and listen to webinars on topics from me and other professionals that can answer some of the questions that you clients have.
