Hiding Assets Before Divorce Is Not Only Immoral, It’s Illegal
–It’s not unheard of to find a spouse has been hiding assets prior to a divorce. Anyone going through a divorce will naturally want to protect their assets from being bequeathed to the other party by the court. Whether a divorce is hostile or mutual, the fact remains that the purpose behind the court’s equitable approach to asset distribution is so that both parties are equally capable in a financial sense after the marriage is made null.
Equitable Distribution
The matter of distributing the assets of a divorcing couple is not as simple as dividing the total assets and distributing them equally. Courts allot assets based on the legal principle of equitable distribution, which takes numerous factors into account when determining who gets what and how much. Some of these factors include educational attainment, financial contribution of each party toward a particular asset, financial needs, and the tenure of the marriage. As stated above, the primary objective of an equitable distribution is so that each party is equally financially capable at the end of the marriage.
Hiding Assets
There are many instances where a spouse wants to ensure that they retain full ownership of a particular asset, and they resort to hiding said asset so that it does not go through the process of equitable distribution. Many spouses who feel that the other party is hiding assets often hire the help of professionals like the ones from the Diligence International Group, who are experts at doing asset searches.
What Happens When I Catch My Spouse Hiding an Asset?
First and foremost, when going through a divorce, both parties are expected to disclose their financial information to the court. This is treated as a statement under oath. Willfully giving false information, whether through a testimony in court or through a signed affidavit, shall be considered an act of perjury. Perjury is punishable with a sentence of up to a year in county jail or up to four years in a state prison.
Apart from the legal consequences, an act of perjury also hurts an offender’s credibility. Any claim succeeding claim that the perjurious person makes in court will now be perceived by the judge as unreliable, and the opposing lawyer can challenge any claim made since the person in question has already set the precedent that their word cannot be trusted.
Even when a spouse is able to successfully conceal an asset, if the former spouse finds the assets, they may reopen the case and the distribution process repeats with the newly-discovered assets factored in, except that the judge is now more likely to award the concealed asset to the other party.
A prime example of this is the case of Denise and Thomas Rossi, where the Court of Appeals awarded all of the lottery winnings of Denise (about $1.3 million) to her ex-husband after it was discovered that she had concealed the winnings during the divorce proceedings.
With all of this considered, it’s important to do things by the book, and to always be forthright with what you communicate, be it written or spoken, especially when it relates to financial and legal matters.
