When you get divorced, dividing assets is one of the major steps you have to take. For those without children, it is perhaps the most important step.
Unfortunately, people sometimes want to keep their spouses from getting what they deserve, so they look for ways to hide assets. One way that business owners may consider doing this is by hiding money in that company.
How do they do it?
There are many potential ways that this can be done. A few examples include:
- Giving assets to business partners
- Creating fake debt
- Overreporting expenses
- Handing out “business loans” to people who will pay the money back the moment the divorce is over
- Underreporting business assets
- Funneling family funds into the business
The thing about business expenses is that they are usually much more complex than household expenses and financial statements. Your spouse may know that they can’t really hide anything that your family owns, as you would see that it is missing, but they may decide they have a better chance to stash that money aside if they do it through the company. This is especially true if you have very little to do with your spouse’s company and you wouldn’t recognize any financial discrepancies, even if they were shown to you.
Hiding assets is illegal
Of course, this entire process is illegal, and that’s why we want to highlight it for you. Your spouse is not supposed to hide assets or lie about what they have. If you believe this is happening, you need to know what legal steps you can take to sort it out.