In Florida, you deserve a fair and equitable division of your marital assets in a divorce. Although this does not always mean a clean split in half, it must all be on the table for consideration.
Attorneys often have access to advanced methods for tracking dishonest asset management by a spouse. Yet if you are just starting to consider a dissolution, Forbes suggests a few places where you might check for anything that you do not know.
Ways to hide assets
A lot of asset hiding involves collusion with family and friends. Your spouse could easily transfer property to a relative, or “lend” a sum of money to someone until after the divorce is final. He or she might also claim that the assets disappeared through an activity like gambling.
Your spouse could also use a job to hide money by increasing IRS withholdings with the intent of filing a back return and cashing the refund. Your partner could make larger payroll contributions to a health savings account (HSA) or an employer-sponsored 401(k). This would effectively decrease the take-home salary and might lower alimony or child support payments.
Finding a paper trail
It is nearly impossible to completely cover a paper trail, especially in this era of electronic transactions. You can begin by looking through the places where you and your spouse keep relevant documents, like bank safe deposit boxes or a home safe. You may learn a lot by merely studying something like a mortgage closing document, which must list all incomes, debts and assets.
The next step could be contacting your accountant and going through the previous years of tax return schedules. You can often find suspicious activity by way of capital gains and losses, dividend payments or supplemental income.