This week we're tackling the age old question when it comes to a Texas Divorce...is my spouse hiding assets from me?
Its not uncommon to have that suspicion, especially these days when couples have their finances set up differently, and you may not have ever know exactly what your spouse had or didn't have. Sometimes we have cases that have joint accounts, where everyone can see everything, everyone has access to everything, and sometimes it's the complete opposite. Some spouses keep all of their financial accounts completely separate. Some spouses we find have one person that handles all the finances, and the other doesnt know anything about where it's kept, where its spent etc.
So the questions is, what do you do, where do you start if you suspect your spouse is hiding assets?
Discovery is the name of the game in this case. You can ask for a couple years worth of bank statements, which is very standard in divorce cases. You can also do credit checks and see if everything checks out there or seems new or something you didn't know about.
The next place to start is to look at a cost benefit analysis. Is it worth your money to look into missing assets. In doing this, we're trying to understand what type of assets might be hidden or possibly could be hidden. Looking into assets and more in depth at tracing money can become really expensive, so it's important to really shake down the case and make sure it's not just a cut and dry, 9-5 job, 401K, etc. Just the normal stuff that is going to have an easy paper trail. We want to make sure we're really digging deeper into the cases that are less transparent.
What are common assets to look at?
Homes
Cars
Properties
Collectables
Art
Memorabilia
Jewelery
Antiques
Bank and Credit Card accounts
bonds and stocks
money markets
The list goes on and on...for more information, visit our website: www. ashmorelawfirm. com
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