Think Your Spouse Is Hiding Assets During Divorce Proceedings? Know These 3 Tricks

If you're going through the divorce process, you may be well away that you need to disclose all assets so that they can be divided. Without a prenuptial agreement, all assets should be split evenly between both spouses. However, one spouse may be hiding assets so that they do not have to split them. Here are three tricks that they may be doing in order to hide assets.

Using Digital Wallets

When you think of accounts that have money in them, you may only think of a traditional checking and savings account through your bank. You get statements in the mail for these accounts, and there is a clear paper trail behind them. Many times people forget about digital wallets and the assets that could be hiding in them.

For example, your spouse may have money in Bitcoin, which is an online currency that can be used like real money. A spouse can even have money sitting in a PayPal account that they are intentionally not transferring to your joint savings account until after the divorce.

Using Tax Overpayment

It's possible that your spouse is using the IRS to hide assets temporarily by overpaying their taxes to the IRS. If they work freelance and currently make quarterly payments, it's possible that they have been making tax payments that are way too large in order to get rid of the money from a savings account. They will then receive a huge tax refund the following year, well after the divorce has been finalized. Don't forget to look at tax payments and if they line up with current income.

Hoarding Cash

There are many ways to start taking money out of a savings account without you knowing, creating a pile of cash that is hard to track back to them. It could be a series of small withdrawals that go unnoticed over a long period of time, or even making purchases with a debit card and asking for a lot of cash back, making the purchase look like it is from the store rather than a withdrawal.

These are just a few ways that a spouse may be hiding money during a divorce so that it is not split among all of the other assets. Your best defense against these actions is to hire a family law attorney to handle your divorce. They know all the tricks and will be able to tell you if your spouse is hiding money that they want to keep for themselves.