07/04/2026
Old bank statements can be worth a lot more than people realize.
One practical habit that can serve people very well in all sorts of situations, including a separation or divorce, is keeping organized records of account statements, transfers, property documents, and valuation information.
Download them regularly. Save them in folders. Keep them. I know it sounds tedious because it is.
But the ability to later prove what money was received, where it came from, where it went, and how it was used can become extremely valuable.
In Lau v. Tao, 2025 ONSC 157, the wife was able to show that money had been given to her by her grandmother. Using account statements and records stretching across years, she was able to trace the funds through different accounts and assets purchased with the original gifted money.
The result was significant. She received an exclusion of $426,887 from her net family property. In practical terms, that meant she did not have to share that amount with her former spouse.
The legal issue was not simply whether she said the money came from her grandmother's gifts. The issue was whether she could prove it with documents.
For the most part, she did.
Most people don't think about future litigation when they are downloading bank statements. But records that seem unimportant today can become the evidence that proves a major financial claim years later.
Some find it helpful to schedule a big download for all account statements once per year when they do their taxes.
The next time downloading statements feels like a low-priority chore, remember: organized records can matter a lot. đź’°
