The distrust remained rampant in your marriage as well as through the divorce proceedings. It lingered. Now comes the time to review your union’s marital assets, and you strongly suspect that your estranged spouse is holding out on you. Your suspicions are likely correct, too.
Too many times, assets get hidden in tumultuous and not-so-tumultuous divorce cases. Cash, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, life insurance policies and certain savings bonds are among the most hidden assets. But there are plenty of other types of assets such as art and jewelry that get hidden as well. Now, you need to determine the ways that your estranged spouse has hidden these assets.
Help of friends and relatives
Among the ways that people attempt to hide specific assets include:
- With the assistance of willing friends and relatives. Sometimes, people are unaware of the culprit’s intentions, but not often. Hiding cash and investment certificates in a family member’s safe deposit box does happen. One also may “repay” bogus debts to friends and relatives to hide assets.
- Asset transfers into accounts that have the names of relatives, friends and corporate entities.
- Financial tomfoolery such as creating custodial funds with your children’s social security numbers and transferring assets into pensions.
- Surreptitiously working with an employer to delay raises and work-related bonuses until after the divorce.
- Expenses stemming from extra-marital affairs. Your estranged spouse may have used money to provide gifts, rent, travel expenses and tuition costs for his or her paramour.
Your marriage may have crumbled for many reasons. One of them was distrust, which is at the root of why you suspect your estranged spouse has hidden marital assets. You must uncover these assets as best as you can and think of all the ways he or she chose to hide them.
