In the first part of this blog, I discussed the many ways your spouse can intentionally and maliciously manipulate marital money, accounts, property, and debt to deprive you of your fair share of assets and support during a divorce. What I described happens all the time, particularly to the spouse that has no control over the finances. Also, your spouse may be doing this when he or she knows that the marriage if over and you may believe the marriage is in good shape. By the time you find out, it may be too late-assets will be gone and debts skyrocketing.
If you think this would never happen to you, you are naive. Your spouse thinks he or she will get away with it-line their pockets by hiding or transferring or disposing assets and running up joint credit cards. You are often trusting. You have no idea of the finances because your spouse has had total control over the money during the marriage You are too close to the situation to see what is happening.
When you suspect your marriage is having problems, start being suspicious and pay attention to money. Become your own detective. Start noticing changes. You may notice changes in your spouse’s behavior. When he or she starts acting like they are pulling away from you, staying out of the house more, travelling more, traveling on weekends, follow your gut suspicions and assume assets and property and money are being hidden from you and debts are being accumulated.
Your wife or husband intends to separate from you. You have no clue. Everything is great in your marriage-so you think. Your spouse, knowing that he or she will be separating from you gets the idea that he or she is going to get rid of assets-he or she goes on a spending spree and uses up all the marital assets-to deprive you of getting any assets at divorce. The money is there for the taking. There is also credit-credit cards, lines of credit-that he or she can tap into to increase debts. He or she is thinking why give up one-half of “my” assets when I can use the marital money myself and do whatever I want. He or she thinks they can get everything and leave your with nothing!
YOU MUST ACT IMMEDIATELY TO PRESERVE YOUR MONEY AND TO STOP YOUR SPOUSE FROM INCURRING DEBTS. What do you do? I’ll discuss what you must do in my next blog.