Is Your Soon-To-Be Ex Hiding Marital Assets?

For the most part, husbands tend to hide assets from their wives during or immediately before a divorce more often than wives tend to do the same to husbands. It is important for divorcing individuals to receive professional advice during a divorce to ensure a fair and reasonable settlement is reached. If a husband does any of the following during a divorce or during a time when divorce looks imminent, the wife should note the activities as redflags that could indicate the husband is hiding martial assets:

1. Maintains complete control of all bank accounts and online passwords
2. Is or become secretive with financial information and affairs
3. Keeps a private mail drop box for account statements and bills
4. Deletes personal financial programs
5. Has large unreimbursed business account expenses
6. Claims the computer with all financial records has “crashed” and removes the hard drive, which is  never to be seen again
7. Aggressively asks for signatures on documents like tax returns and deeds
8. Wants to execute mutual durable power of attorneys for “estate planning” reasons
9. Goes on out of town trips with his shady financial advisor
10. Begins stating that his income has sudden declined
11. Claims an income decrease but continues spending as much on expenses as before
12. Purchases flashy items like a car or jewelry
13. Reports a dramatic increase in marital and business investments
14. Has multiple cell phones over a short period of time
15. Visits countries with relaxed banking laws
16. Becomes greedy and exhibits claims of entitlement
17. Purchases items that can be sold later, like art or toys
18. Begins drawing on large amounts of debt
19. Gambles more often and places money “on account” with the casino
20. Opens multiple bank accounts without an obvious reason for doing so

For more on this topic, see Jeff Lander, 21 Signs That Your Husband May Be Hiding Marital Assets During Your Divorce, Forbes, Mar. 20, 2012.

Special thanks to Jim Hillhouse (Professional Legal Marketing (PLM, Inc.)) for bringing this article to my attention.