There are two main ways that people will sometimes try to keep assets away from their spouse during a divorce. Even if they know that they’re supposed to make a full disclosure of all assets and fairly split up the marital assets that they own jointly, they may take steps to try to shift asset division in their favor.
If you’re going through a divorce, it’s important to know how this works so you can understand when your spouse may be trying to influence asset division. You can then take action to ensure that you get a fair division of those marital assets. This is especially important in a high-asset divorce.
Dissipating assets
Dissipating assets means spending them down so that there simply isn’t as much to go through property division in the first place. For instance, you and your spouse may have had a bank account with $100,000 in it, meaning both of you likely would’ve received $50,000. But if your spouse spends $40,000 before the divorce, then you only get to divide the remaining $60,000—and they have essentially spent $20,000 of your money.
Hiding assets
On the other side, people sometimes try to hide assets, rather than spending them. One example of this is when they create phony debts or financial obligations. Maybe your spouse says that they recently remembered a $100,000 loan that their brother gave them, so they needed to take all of the money out of the account to pay back the loan. But the loan never existed, and your spouse is simply planning to have the money transferred back into their name after the divorce.
Both of these issues can make divorce more complicated, so be sure you understand all of your legal options.
