Are you getting everything you're entitled to in your divorce settlement? When it comes to sorting out the property values, child support calculations and spousal support, it often takes another set of trained eyeballs to find all the stuff that you deserve to keep. That includes NOT paying what you shouldn't be paying.
That's why you'll want to listen to Megan Kern, Modern Law's Certified Divorce Financial Analyst who talks in today's podcast about how she found her niche by excavating your ex's finances, and how that relates to her hometown in New Orleans.
As an extra bonus, Modern Divorce Podcast host Billie Tarascio talks with Megan about her long history working and playing in the biggest event New Orleans is famous for: Mardi Gras and all the festivities that make it such a blow-out event.
Are you getting everything you're entitled to in your divorce settlement? When it comes to sorting out the property values, child support calculations and spousal support, it often takes another set of trained eyeballs to find all the stuff that you deserve to keep. That includes NOT paying what you shouldn't be paying.
That's why you'll want to listen to Megan Kern, Modern Law's Certified Divorce Financial Analyst who talks in today's podcast about how she found her niche by excavating your ex's finances, and how that relates to her hometown in New Orleans.
As an extra bonus, Modern Divorce Podcast host Billie Tarascio talks with Megan about her long history working and playing in the biggest event New Orleans is famous for: Mardi Gras and all the festivities that make it such a blow-out event.
Billie Tarascio: [00:00:00] Hello. And welcome back to another episode of the Modern Divorce podcast. Today is going to be a lot of fun. We get to talk to someone who's internal at Modern Law. And somebody who is a really crucial asset. She's like our sniper. We're talking to Megan Kern, who is our internal in-house full-time CDFA, forensic accountant paralegal.
What that means is really exciting. And I want you to meet her. She's also super fun lives in new Orleans. [00:01:00] Megan, welcome to the show.
Megan Kern: Hi, thanks for having me.
Billie Tarascio: Thank you so much for being here. First can you just give people a little bit of background?
About who you are?
Megan Kern: Born and raised in new Orleans small town, big town field.
The village really does raise the child. So there were. Friends of, of my, the parents of my friends basically took you under their wing and you are let out into the neighborhood going from house to house. And that's basically what I've brought to my children as well in my small neighborhood .
I started working in legal during college, I was basically a file clerk doing asbestos litigation. That's where I basically learned what the difference between a pleading was and discovery. After college I decided to continue in, was a legal assistant in personal injury and kind of moved up the ranks to that.
I moved to Texas for a couple of years, just for a change of scenery, but of [00:02:00] course, new Orleans was my home. So I was back about two years later. About six months after Katrina is when I actually moved back. When there was no place to live. Yeah, there was housing was at an all time standstill.
People were living with their parents and their grandparents on couches, wherever they could, while their home, their homes, their apartments, everything was being gutted and rebuilt. I, you could say that the employment market was. Out of this world. So I was able to get my pick of the litter of any law firm that I wanted to work at when I moved back.
Because so many people move to Houston and Atlanta, not too many people were moving back. So these law firms wanted to get up and running. So they were here. Here you go. You want a job? Here's your job? What position do you want? What's what kind of money do you want? Come on in. So I, I was working [00:03:00] hurricane litigation on the defense side.
So we worked for the insurance company. So we were the bad guys, which was a lot of accounting because we had to deal with the public adjusters and their reports and see kind of where the money would lie after the expenses were paid. And I mean, everything went to trial. So it got me a lot of trial experience.
I was after that, my college boyfriend and I, we had been together for 10 years at that point, decided to get married. So he is from small town, Louisiana Tibideau, which is down 'da Bayou'. If he has some cocktails, that accident gets way thick. And if you're not, if you're not, if you've never heard it before, it's, it's hard to decipher exactly what he is saying.
He has. Let's [00:04:00] say he has learned to speak more eloquently as his professional career has surpassed what his small town upbringing was. So I believe Chevron put him through a speech class.
Billie Tarascio: I'll tell you the first time I went to new Orleans, I was going on a cruise and I was in the cabs and Uber's, and could not understand the drivers, like had no idea what they were saying.
Megan Kern: It all depends on where they are in this city, because there's, you know, there's uptown, which you will more likely be able to understand. There's Mettery that has a little bit of a yat accent 'where'ya at' is where that comes from. Where yet? Where are you at? I'm asking, where are you? Where are you? I'm coming to get you where y'at?
My, my friend, Andrea, I remember growing up, she used to make fun of me because it's, I would [00:05:00] say at your house, not at your house. Which is how I say it now, but at your house, like at your house, do you understand how you say so,
Megan, can you, can you go full blown, like as hardcore on your accent as possible?
Billie Tarascio: Like you're like channel the small town husband for like the next minute while we talk so we can hear it.
Megan Kern: Oh, shi...at. I got, I don't know if I could do that. Yeah, so it gets pretty thick. Not so much for me, but definitely for him, but I can, I can hear it and I can assess it basically.
Billie Tarascio: Sure, sure. I get it.
So I'm Sicilian and I learned Italian in college and I studied abroad and I learned proper Italian and I had been to Sicily before, but then I went to Sicily and I couldn't understand them. And it's the same thing. It's just a very muddy version of Italian, that that is a dialect and its own language.[00:06:00]
And you know, the Italians do look down on the Sicilians and it's probably the exact same thing.
Megan Kern: Yeah. There's actually classes that you can take at LSU and ULS that are Cajun French
Billie Tarascio: Cajun. Is that what we call it? Is that the dialect
Megan Kern: that's the dialects Cajun French. We are Acadian. So.
Billie Tarascio: Well, that's fantastic.
That's so cool. And I'm so lucky to have you at Modern Law. Thankfully, the pandemic has allowed us to bring on the best people from everywhere. And so tell me, what does the CDFA do?
Megan Kern: CDFA, we are trained and certified to look at all of the financials during the marriage, after the marriage, during a divorce through a business and decipher.
Calculating community portions versus separate portions. And also what is the best route for [00:07:00] the clients, which asset would be an asset to that client? Everything is divisible 50 50, but there is always a way that you can trade off on assets and liabilities. And it's my job to make sure our client does it in a way that will benefit them for years.
Billie Tarascio: Are you working with clients directly then to go over?
Megan Kern: Absolutely. When we get a case here, basically, if it's a financial case or small or big we work with the client in order to get all of the documents in order to calculate these things. I have. Magic spreadsheet that I plug everything in and it lets me manipulate the numbers on either side of the column.
And that will allow me to have a sit down conversation with the client and say, okay, here it is 50 50, but if we move this one into his column and this one into your car, you're going to get dividends and interest on this investment account. [00:08:00] And he is just going to get cash. So I would recommend that you do this or this in order to help benefit for the next few.
Billie Tarascio: Such an asset to the clients, such an asset. I don't know any other law firms that have someone like you on full-time so you are, I really think you're like my sniper. And then the other thing that you do is forensic accounting.
Megan Kern: Correct. I will dig. My job as a forensic accountant is basically to get all of the records, not only statements, but we're looking at canceled checks.
We're looking at the posits, not only just deposits. We are looking for deposit items, which means when you fill out a deposit slip, you list all the checks that are being deposited. If you look at the bank statement at that same time period, you will see one lump deposit number that doesn't always. It's not always just one item.
It could be several items. So by going to the bank and getting the rest of the [00:09:00] deposit items, you can actually see what was deposited into that account. You can then trace it, trace you trace what happens to it. After if it was paid on credit cards, you go to the credit cards. If it was given to somebody else, you will have a canceled check showing who it was written to and what account it was the positive into.
Even if that account is not in your name or your spouses. And you can go through all of these things and you can decide for whether or not there is an inheritance received, or if there was monetary gifts received. And what did they do with that? Which could potentially give you a reimbursement claim.
You could also look at whether or not there was large extracts. Purchases out there. If there was a eight piece of artwork that was purchased six years ago, but you had no knowledge of it. There's an artwork somewhere that has a 6,000, at least a $6,000 value to it that needs to be assessed and it needs to be included in the community.
So then there's just a tidbit of what I do. I've [00:10:00] also. We've worked on pinpointing mortgage balances during certain periods of time. This will help if ever there is a community lien that needs to be calculated or any reimbursement claim that is associated with separate property. I think that's, I mean, there's, there's, there's a ton that forensic accounting can do there.
It's just, it's it's, it's expansive.
Billie Tarascio Yeah. I mean, we've, we've got a case we're working on right now where we're fighting over business valuation. We've got to shady ex and explain the things that you're doing to make sure that our client isn't getting screwed.
Megan Kern: I am we, since we have, in that case, we have a financial neutral and my.
Job right now is basically is to go over all of the documents that the other spouse provided to the financial neutral and make sure that everything was accounted [00:11:00] for. There are years and years of financials that were given to her. There's going to be years and years of bank statements and in general liquors and PNLs and balance sheets.
And she may not go through everything with a fine tooth comb. Right. And, and I, it, it's going to be my position to bring things to our attention that she may have missed, which will ultimately affect the bottom line.
Billie Tarascio: Absolutely. That's, that's kind of the biggest thing in family court lawyers, judges, financial neutrals typically are not paying attention to all the details.
And you are, you're like a financial detective.
Megan Kern: I like that. I'll take that.
Billie Tarascio: It's pretty cool. You're sharp as a whip and helping people understand their AFI's is also a hard thing. So how do you find that you can [00:12:00] impact people and help people when they're doing their AFI's?
Megan Kern: The problem
I find that clients have with.
Is that there's a lot of legal terminology in there that they may not understand, and they may not get that. You know, this is additional compensation from your employer, but like it says cell phones. So yeah, I have a cell phone. Let me put that there it's, it's proper placement. It's proper calculation and it's really beneficial to have somebody go through it with you in order to put your numbers in the exact right spots.
Billie Tarascio: And that's really important. Mostly spousal maintenance. Like if we are, as lawyers arguing over what spousal maintenance should be, not having accurate expenses on either side or income on either side really does impact what your spousal maintenance is going to be. And also you being able to rip apart at opposing sides, affidavit of information, it's an affidavit, which means it's a sworn statement.
So if [00:13:00] somebody is leaving income off their financial affidavit, Like, we want to know that we want to bring that up.
Megan Kern: Yeah, we'll, we'll do proper calculation of income, but we will also after disclosures have their bank statements in their credit card statements. So if they're overspending and they're not listing a proper expense, we will have the correct amount.
And if there's any exemplary expenses, whether it's contributions to retirement or gifts to their adult children that can be taken out, we will do that as well in order to calculate the other sides proper. And expensive.
Billie Tarascio: The other place that I really like to use you is with child support, deviations, upward child support, deviations, and a lifestyle analysis.
So, so to get an upward deviation of child support, we have to show how much money was spent on the children. During the marriage and that doesn't just include like direct expenses for the children. It includes like, what was their portion of housing? What was your vacations each year? How much are your cars that you were spending?
So you can do that [00:14:00] lifestyle analysis. And what that does is it determines a new level of base support. So the child support calculator automatically says, you know, for two kids, the base support is let's say $3,000 or something like that. The base support of a high income family might be closer to 10,000 a month, which makes a massive difference in child support.
Megan Kern: Correct. We will look at all of the bank statements and all the credit card statements for the last few years of the marriage and break it down, which means we transcribe everything and categorize it at the end, when everything is said and done and into the spreadsheets, we will have categories. This is how much they spent in housing per year.
This is how much they spend in food and houses. Per year, this is how much they spent on clothing or year. And it gives you a better understanding of what the lifestyle was of the children during the marriage.
Billie Tarascio: I love it. I love it. Megan, we can't finish without talking about new Orleans and Mardi Gras.
Megan Kern: Okay. [00:15:00]
Billie Tarascio: Well you just were at Mardi Gras, right?
Megan Kern: I, yeah, it was it was, we were back bigger, better.
Billie Tarascio: Bigger badder better. So was that okay, so did Mardi Gras not happen in the last couple of years?
Megan Kern: Did not happen in 2021 when the pandemic started, it was a week after Mardi Gras.
Billie Tarascio: Wow. Okay. Okay.
Megan Kern: So we you shut down March 13th and March 1st was Mardi Gras that year.
Billie Tarascio: Woof woof.
Megan Kern: Just in the Nick of time.
Billie Tarascio: So what do you do? How are you part of Mardi Gras?.
Megan Kern: So I am a part of an all female crew that rides on Thursday night prior to the big weekend. there Fat Tuesdays I was on Tuesday. And then you have Lundy Gras, which is on Monday and then the big weekend is right before. Bigger parade start that Wednesday.
So you have Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and then Tuesday. And then you're done.
Billie Tarascio: I understand. [00:16:00] So, cause I don't really know. So I was raised Catholic. I know about Ash Wednesday which starts lent. So does the, does the parade and fat Tuesday is supposed to be the celebration before lent because during lent as a Catholic, you're supposed to like be sad, right?
Megan Kern: Fat Tuesday , is getting out all of your sin before you're supposed to not do anything
Billie Tarascio: It's your bachelorette
party...
Megan Kern: Over Indulge and drinking and eating and partying and do everything, get it out of your system because Ash Wednesday starts on that Wednesday.
Billie Tarascio: So does the parade end Tuesday or does it go into lent.
Megan Kern: Midnight, Tuesday. So Ash, Wednesday, midnight, you will see a very long line of police horses. Go down bourbon street and push the entire crowd into small bars and all the bars on bourbon street shut down until 6:00 AM, but they shut down, [00:17:00] which is the only time they shut down their entire year all.
Billie Tarascio: Wow. So this is so fun because it's so cultural. It's religious, it's historic, like it's, it's cool.
Megan Kern: Satirical. It's very satirical. We make fun of everybody. Outsiders religions, politician name it. We make fun of everything,
Billie Tarascio: so, okay. So Wednesday at midnight, it's done. We're sad. And when does it start?
Megan Kern: It starts two major weekends.
Billie Tarascio: Two weekends prior.
No, so you do Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then it starts Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday.
Oh my gosh. And you, you party for each of those days,
Megan Kern: I went to parade on each and every day.
Billie Tarascio: Oh, my gosh. And when you parade, I saw videos of this. Tell me, describe to people what these parades are like.
Megan Kern: So I only ride in one parade, which [00:18:00] is a huge massive event. We had 26 floats. We have. 30 something bands and walking crews.
We have celebrity guests. We have a huge party after we have a huge party before. I mean, it's just, it's a whole day. It started at noon and I think I got off the float at 1:00 AM. So it's a marathon.
Billie Tarascio: Marathon.
Megan Kern: So you start in basically the September before Mardi Gras is when you buy all your throws and then in November you find out what floats you're on.
January 6th is the actual start of carnival. It is King's day. It is also another Catholic holiday. That's the start of carnival king symphony. We have king cakes.
So January 6th is when we find out your theme and your float will have its own float. [00:19:00] Theme where we make these fabulous head dresses. Every float is different. And then you start making your shoes, my particular crew, we are the Krewe of muses. So we have high heeled shoes or any kind of shoes, really that we glitter and decorate and we throw to the crowd sounds ridiculous.
It's extremely heavy. And I'm sure there's multiple injuries during the parade. But it's all in good fun. And it's a keepsake that people take home to them back to Chicago, back to California, wherever they're coming from. And they put it on their mantels. So, and you're only allowed to do a few shoes. So there's, we're not inundating the entire crowd with shoes and nothing but shoes.
It's, everybody gets a few shoes to throw. And then the rest of there are throws of beads and light up things. And it's just, it's all a good time. It's all a good time.
Billie Tarascio: I don't know that most of us Americans fully understand the [00:20:00] extent of the traditions and...
Megan Kern: everybody needs to experience.
Billie Tarascio: It sounds like it, absolutely it think of anything else that happens in our country.
I mean, it's kind of like burning man, but so much older and so much like richer in tradition.
Megan Kern: We are very rich in tradition. It is also, it's not all adult and party too. I mean, I have two small children and they basically come to the majority of the parades with me. You bring out, oh, you bring your ladder out there, you get out there hours before the parade even stars everybody's in the streets, dancing.
There's usually bands on every block and a lot, if the school, if there is a school on the route, they will sell. Through passes and the dads will be cooking jumbalaya in the back that you can, you can purchase. And it's, it's all family fun, but I mean, of course there are the parades that you keep your kids at home and you do your own adult thing and there's drinking in the [00:21:00] streets and their shots and just good time.
Just make sure you bring your Gatorade and try and get some sleep.
Billie Tarascio: Okay. So you enjoy Mardi Gras without being a marathon drinker. It sounds like.
Megan Kern: Absolutely!.
Billie Tarascio: That's good to know. That's good to know. Fantastic. I feel like law firms should go next year and you can, you can hook us up with some information.
Megan Kern: Let me know. And I will start looking at places to stay for everybody. And which weekend y'all want to come.
Billie Tarascio: Sounds insane. Last tip. Before we, we wrap up. So I was in Las Vegas for a work meeting and. One too many drinks, which for me is three. I can do two, three is too much. And I was asking you like, what, how do you, what are your best tips?
Because you are obviously, you know how to handle when you've had a little bit too much. So give everyone the same tips you gave me.
Megan Kern: Same tip [00:22:00] it's. My secret tip is marathoners take these electrolyte. That you can purchase from any GNC or any health food store. And I believe that Amazon sells it to pop two in the morning, two in the evening, two in the morning again.
And your golden.
Billie Tarascio: So everybody should try that and let me know how it works. Thank you so much for your time today. I am so grateful that I get to work with you, and then I get to know you and thanks for sharing all that information with our listeners. Absolutely. Thank you for having me. We'll see you soon.