How do you handle gathering financial information from clients for financial statements

Hi everyone,

Our firm has been around for 40+ years. We handle a sizeable amount of family law matters, but this could also apply to other areas of the law.

How do you manage financial information intake for the purposes of filling out a financial statement?

For instance, in Ontario, there's a form required for court where someone lists all their assets and debts for their date of marriage, date of separation, and today's current value. We also have to provide proof of each value either with bank statements, credit card statements, etc. I am trying to make the process easier, because half the time clients come in and they have a current statement, but not the statement for their date of separation, or they didn't know to include their retirement savings account, etc. It's frustrating. The court form is not exactly "user friendly" for laypersons and includes unnecessary jargon and questions that we normally take care of.

I'm thinking of using a much simpler form. But I'd like to be able to send them something electronically to fill out such as "Do you have any bank accounts?" and have follow up questions if they hit yes. Maybe google forms??? Anyone out there have a more elegant solution?

Bonus question: How do you handle clients that are difficult in getting this information? I am always amazed at how a client will claim they don't have online access to xyz bank account or retirement fund, and when I tell them to go into a branch and request, for example, their August 2020 monthly statement for their account, they look at me like a deer in headlights and usually end up taking a month to do what I asked. There must be a better way.

EDIT: I had someone pm me the suggestion that I have clients fill out a million blank directions and fill them in and get them directly from the source. I am not above doing this, and if this is common practice among other firms, this may solve our problem. The issue is, I'm trying to keep costs down for clients. Having us do it all raises costs significantly.