Tariffs and Plunging Markets – What They May Mean if You’re Getting Divorced

Millions of Americans sat down this weekend to contemplate plunging stock markets and depleted retirement accounts.

For those thinking about divorce, the need to know more about the other side’s hidden assets just got more urgent.

It happens all the time: Wife and her financial advisor decide that she needs a certain amount of money in the divorce to avoid having to sell the house and move schools for her children. Before the events of last week, the money she knows about in various investment funds would have been enough to cover that number.

Now, those funds may not be enough. What else does the husband have that she doesn’t know about?

Many women, even those with sophisticated financial backgrounds, remain in the dark as to what their husbands get up to at work each day. It’s not that the husbands are smarter, it’s that when there is trust, the wife doesn’t demand detailed financials of his businesses. The wife’s own business and childcare duties leave little time to monitor someone they trust.

• In the past several years we have looked at husbands who make money from public companies, take a portion of their compensation directly, but put 80% of it through a limited liability company they told the wife was defunct.
• We have found successful wealth managers who sell insurance and are compensated through as many as ten different insurance company subsidiaries, sometimes through LLC’s the wife doesn’t know about.
• Husbands sensing the marriage is in trouble often form new companies in the twelve months before the wife files – and we often find those – as in at least a third of the time.

Our value proposition: If we’re hired and you spend about $4,000 on an asset search, we need to find around $8,000 in hidden assets for you to break even. Without any guarantees, I can say that we usually hit this mark with ease and exceed it by a lot. That’s why so many of our clients come to us through repeat engagements by divorce lawyers and divorce financial analysts.

While we can’t find bank accounts and brokerage accounts without a court order, you will be able to get those through discovery during your divorce.

But these days, more than ever, it’s important to look beyond cash and into the world of hidden companies and business cash flows. That is where a sophisticated, legal and ethical divorce asset search can help.