When people are going through a divorce and arguments over splitting assets get heated, a common natural reaction is for each person involved to go into survival mode. This means that they want to try and preserve as much for themselves as possible. In order to achieve this, they can go to extreme lengths, including hiding assets in off-shore bank accounts, sometimes doing this over the years that they were anticipating an eventual divorce.
The most common strategies that people make use of is either setting up a foreign bank account or transferring small deposits over to a close friend over a prolonged period of time. Other ways that people achieve this is through other types of secret accounts and storing cash or jewelry in safes.
The problem with this kind of activity and hiding it from your spouse is that it is very easy to trace from some simple online investigation. Your spouse only needs to install spyware on the family computer and he or she can quite easily trace your intentions. It is not unheard of for a spouse to install a GPS device in a car or smartphone to also trace activities in relation to hiding assets.
There are laws that protect people from being spied upon or stalked, whether it is by a stranger or by a spouse. However, if a spouse does manage to uncover assets through this type of activity, the findings will still apply when it comes to splitting your assets.
Therefore it's important to think twice before hiding assets. Instead, it is wise to look at smarter ways that you can come to a lucrative divorce settlement.
Source: Huffington pose, "Uncovering hidden assets," accessed Oct. 27, 2017
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