What is a Subpoena Duces Tecum?

Hi, I’m Charlie Hofheimer and today we’re going to talk about subpoena duces tecums; that’s subpoena duces tecums. They are the stealth weapons in the divorce process in my opinion. Sheera Herrell of our office loves that expression and uses it frequently, but what subpoena duces tecum does it is allows us to serve a company, say a bank or investment company and ask them for any and all documents related to your husband, or to you and your husband if you don’t have copies of them. So we subpoena the company that generates the documents and ask them for copies to make sure that we have all of the documents that are relevant to your case, and it’s very helpful because sometimes under a request for production of documents to your husband, he doesn’t necessarily give us all the documents, but by using a subpoena duces tecum we can go around him and go to his employer, or go to wherever he has accounts and get the information directly from them. So it’s a powerful weapon and oftentimes we will find information that was not volunteered to us by reviewing those documents and really help our clients. So that’s a subpoena duces tecum; a very savvy and helpful tool and another arrow in your quiver of weapons to use to get information during a divorce case.

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