How Business People Hide Assets During Divorce
If you are going through a divorce and your spouse owns a business, you should be very careful because there are a number of ways business persons hide assets during a divorce. Here are some of those ways.
Selling Assets at Discounted Rates
One of the commonest tricks in the books is to sell things at discounted rates and then recover the difference or reclaim the assets after the divorce has been finalized. For example, your partner may make arrangements with their friends to sell them things at discounted rates. The friends then pay the difference after the divorce is over.
Opening Offshore Accounts
Another old trick is to open an offshore account and use it to hide money. It used to be that people thought only the very wealthy could open offshore accounts, but the reality is that an average person can do it too.
Deliberately Overpaying Taxes
Your spouse can also hide some money by overpaying their taxes. This is a neat trick because even though the IRS won't refund the tax overpayment, your spouse will use the money to settle their tax obligations for the subsequent years. They can then use the money they would have used to pay the taxes for their personal expenses.
Delaying Receipts of Revenue
It's even possible to delay receipts of business revenue when the divorce finalization is imminent. For example, they can "forget" to receipt clients for goods delivered or set their payments dates to future days after the divorce is finalized. That way they keep for themselves the money that they received during your marriage and should have been part of the marital assets.
Incurring Fake Expenses
This is when your partner comes up with nonexistent expenses and "pays" those expenses with the business money. Instead of creating fake expenses, your partner can also inflate the costs of the actual and real expenses they have. For example, their utility bills, rent, and transport expenses may suddenly increase, or they may spend some money on nonexistent expansion plans.
Delaying Signing Of Contracts
The last example is that of delaying contracts or acquisitions that may inflate the value of their business or land them big payments. For example, if your partner has been working on a contract for some time, they may negotiate with the other party to have the contract signed after the divorce even if there is no need to do so.
The good thing is that while the above tricks may be new to you, they are not new to experienced divorce lawyers. Using a divorce attorney will help you get the best divorce settlement you deserve.
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