When you and your spouse got married, it was “share and share alike.” Well, the halcyon days of your relationship are past and you’ve developed a creeping intuition that your spouse is not being honest with you about money matters — probably in preparation for a split.
How do you know if you’re just being overly suspicious and paranoid or simply perceptive? Here are some of the signs that your spouse really is hiding assets:
- Your spouse isn’t direct or clear about the taxes. If your spouse goes out of their way to keep you out of the tax papers, that’s a sure sign the papers contain information about assets or income sources you don’t know exist.
- Financial statements are no longer coming to the house. Your spouse is having them delivered to their office or somewhere else you can’t intrude.
- Your spouse makes some massive and unexpected payments. That might be a huge overpayment on the taxes (in anticipation of the refund they can claim after the divorce) or they may suddenly “loan” their sibling money for some fictitious reason.
- Your spouse claims their business is in distress — but it doesn’t seem like it. When a profitable-seeming company suddenly develops a cash-flow problem for no reason right around the time its owner starts considering a divorce, it’s time to be suspicious.
- Your spouse is still working just as much, but their salary has decreased. That may mean anything from deferred bonuses to the possibility that your spouse is funneling part of their wages into a private account somewhere.
- Your spouse has a sudden interest in cryptocurrency or offshore accounts. If your spouse seems to constantly be researching these but doesn’t really discuss it, that may be where money is hiding.
Frankly, you probably know your spouse better than anyone. If your instincts tell you that something is off, trust them. Find out more about your legal rights and options during a divorce as soon as possible.
