A separation file is separate questions. In Ontario, an affair, the money, and the parenting are not one investigation with three moods. Each is a record of its own, and a report that mixes them is not usable. Investigation Hotline is a licensed Ontario firm at 1920 Yonge Street in Toronto. This page is about keeping those questions apart. It is not legal advice, and it does not decide a marriage, a support number, or a parenting schedule.
What a divorce record is asked to show is what a divorce investigation records. The hire itself is hiring a private investigator for a divorce. This article stays on the split. If you cannot say which sentence the file is for, there is nothing to write yet.
One sentence is one file
A usable question fits in one sentence. Who met, on which dates, in a way a document or a lawful observation can show. Whether income or spending matches what was stated. Whether parenting time matched what was agreed or ordered. Those are three sentences. They can matter in the same separation. They are still three files.
Clients often arrive with all three at once, plus a stack of screenshots and a fear that everything is connected. The fear can be told at intake. It cannot be the finding. A report that opens on an affair, detours into a bank withdrawal, and ends on a comment about a child has not answered any of the three. Counsel cannot tell which pages to read, and a later reader cannot tell which sentence was tested.
Name the sentence before anyone is sent to look at anything. If two sentences are real, open two scoped pieces of work, or do the first and stop. Do not let the second one ride along because the first meeting felt unfinished. A checkpoint belongs at the end of each question: continue that question, switch to a different question, or close. Activity without that choice is a log, not an answer.
Say what “enough” is for that sentence. Two dated records may close an affair question. A support question may need the income papers you already hold, not a story about a restaurant. A parenting question may need the exchange dates, not a theory about the other adult’s character. Enough is a decision you make with the scope, not a feeling that more would be safer.
An affair is its own question
An affair question is about a specific claim: that someone met a person, on dates you can name, in a way that contradicts what they told you or what a form says. The work for that claim is an infidelity investigation. This page does not repeat that service. It only says the affair file stops at that claim.
It does not become a report on hidden money because a meeting was expensive. It does not become a report on parenting because a child was in the house that week. Those may be real worries. They are the next sentence, written on their own pages, or they are not part of this file at all. Folding them into the affair notes makes the meeting carry conclusions it cannot carry.
The affair report, when one is written, is dates, places that can be stated from a lawful record, who was seen, and what was not found. A night with nothing to record is a result. It is not a reason to change the question into money or parenting while the same notes are still open. If the affair sentence is answered, stop or write a new scope.
Money questions are not one pile
Money in a separation is at least two different sentences, and people treat them as one. “The income on the form does not match the spending” is a support question. “There is property, a vehicle, or an account we need identified” is an asset question. A single narrative called “they are hiding money” is not yet either sentence.
Income, shared living, and the capacity to pay belong on a support payment investigation. That file does not assess parenting, and it does not decide what support should be. Property and ownership questions belong on asset identification. A withdrawal you can point to in a statement you already hold is a record. A belief that an account exists somewhere is not a finding.
Keep the papers with the sentence they answer. A statement of earnings does not prove who someone met. A photo from a public place does not prove what a business is worth. When both exist, they are labeled separately and they do not stand in for each other. Rumour is most dangerous here, because a round number and a suspicious tone can look like a result when no document was read.
Most money questions never need a long file. The statements, the tax papers, or the agreement you already have may be the whole matter, read with your lawyer. The private report belongs when those papers are scattered, or when a stated figure and a document you hold do not match, and someone who was not in the marriage needs that mismatch in order. It does not belong because the lifestyle feels wrong and no paper has been named.
Parenting is not an affair file
A parenting question is about where a child was, who was there, and whether the time matched what counsel asked you to document. That work is a child custody investigation. It does not decide custody. A court does that, with the lawyer’s advice. This page is not that advice.
Say so at the start if children are the centre of the dispute. A file scoped as an affair, which then collects comments about exchanges, produces notes nobody asked for and misses the dates that were. Staffing, timing, and what the report is allowed to say all change when the sentence is about a child. Mixing the adult relationship into those pages, without telling counsel, is how a careful record becomes a problem.
Emotion at an exchange is not a finding about parenting. A parent can be upset and still have been there at the agreed time. A calm handoff can still have broken the schedule. The report records the time, the place, and who was present, if that is the sentence. It does not grade the adult, and it does not import an affair conclusion into a child’s week.
If someone is in danger now, call the police. A private file is not an emergency response, and it is not a protection order. Safety and documentation are different acts. Do not wait on a report when the need is immediate help.
What a mixed report does
A mixed report feels complete because it is long. Length is not an answer. Counsel has to map each paragraph back to a legal issue, and a paragraph that serves two issues serves neither cleanly. The affair pages get discounted because they wander into money. The money pages get discounted because they depend on a suspicion from the affair. The parenting lines get discounted because they were collected under a different question.
The same damage happens in the other direction. Three thin reports that secretly rely on each other are still mixed. If the asset note only makes sense after reading the affair note, say that the scopes were not separate. Separate means each report can be read alone: the question at the top, the records in the middle, and a stop at the bottom that does not borrow a conclusion from a different file.
Negative results have to stay with their own question too. If the stated late nights match the documents you hold, that can close the affair suspicion. It does not prove the income form is honest, and it does not prove the parenting schedule was kept. Closing one sentence is not a credit you can spend on the other two.
What each report can record
Whichever sentence you chose, the pages are ordinary. What was asked. What was seen or read, and the date. Which document the client provided, or which public record was used. Who was present when a statement was taken. What is missing. Who will read the result: you, counsel, or both.
A description stays a description. “On this date the statement shows this withdrawal” can be checked. “The withdrawal shows they were planning to leave” cannot. “The exchange happened at this time” can be checked. “The tone of the exchange shows they are an unfit parent” cannot. The checked sentences are the report. The interpretations can be discussed and then left out of the finding.
Name the reader before the pages are written. You and counsel may need the same records with a different cover note. Agreeing on that at intake keeps one question from being rewritten into another after the notes exist. The investigator does not choose the legal argument, and does not promise that a judge will accept the file.
What no report here will decide
No report on this page will decide that the marriage should end, what support should be, or how parenting time should be divided. Those are legal decisions. The investigator writes what the chosen sentence can support from records the file is allowed to use. A pile of unlabeled photos and angry commentary is not that writing.
This firm will not open a phone or an account, and it will not describe that work. A request to recover someone else’s messages, or to use a sign-in because you used to know it, is not a file. This firm will not judge the case by watching someone, and it will not describe that work either. If the only instruction is to keep going until the worst version is confirmed, the answer is no.
A refusal is part of the help. Clients sometimes hear it as taking sides. It is the opposite. A record that depends on a step the firm will not take is a record counsel may be unable to use, and it can create a second problem beside the separation. Stopping there protects the questions that can still be documented.
Counsel decides what is usable
Whether a judge or a tribunal can rely on investigator notes is a different question from whether the notes were written. That question is whether investigator evidence is admissible. This article does not answer it. A licence does not put a report into evidence. Counsel decides what to file, and a court decides what to accept.
Bring counsel the sentence before the work expands, not a finished mix as a surprise. A surprise bundle is how careful notes lose their use. If a hearing date exists, say so. The scope can then match the issue on that date instead of collecting every grievance in the marriage. The investigator still does not predict the outcome.
Clients who only want the worst case confirmed are asking for advocacy. Advocacy is the lawyer’s role. The report’s role is the record, including the days that showed nothing. If that is not the product you want, say so before a file opens. It is cheaper to stop at the conversation than to pay for pages you will ask to have rewritten.
What has to be true before a file opens
Bring one sentence, or bring two and say which is first. Bring the papers you already hold, or say you do not have them. Say whether a child is the subject. Say whether the worry is income, property, or both. Say who will read the result, and what would count as enough. Say if you were hoping for one narrative that proves all of it. That hope can be answered before anyone is billed.
The way a file is scoped is the same here as on any other matter. The question, the limit, and the stop rule come first. Hours and cost follow that scope, including the chance that the honest product is a short note: these papers do not answer that sentence, or this sentence is a different file. Paying for that note is a completed question. Paying for a blended story is not.
Stop rules stay in the scope. Danger now, call the police. A legal choice, ask counsel. A request to open someone else’s phone, the answer is no. A request to fold parenting into an affair file without a new sentence, the answer is no. A further phase is a new decision, not an automatic expansion because the first answer was painful or incomplete.
That is the use of a separation file in Ontario. An affair, the money, and the parenting stay in separate reports. A report that mixes them is not usable. The investigator confirms the sentence, the scope, and the cost first.
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