If you spot these signs early, you can protect what’s rightfully owed to you!
If you start to notice changes in your finances, or have concerns that your spouse may be hiding money from you during or prior to going through a divorce, it might be prudent to hire a private investigator to help you identify the signs sooner rather than later.
Regardless of the reason for the divorce to take place, spouses will eventually try to take care of their future – in the process, they’ll take advantage of their future ex-partner. They’ll try to play victim, or try to convince you that they need help to maintain a lifestyle, or use children to manipulate their spouse during a fragile time.
If you thought splitting a family was hard, the splitting of financial assets is harder. The hardest type of investigation we deal with is a hidden asset investigation – especially here in Florida. It gets even harder when a spouse is actively trying to hide their assets. Hiding a vehicle from your spouse is difficult (not unheard of), but hiding money is a lot easier.
On this article, we’re going to go over the top 5 signs to look out for when you suspect your partner is hiding money from you.
- New Credit Card or Bank Statements – This is usually the biggest sign. A spouse will start to receive bank statements or credit card statements that you’ve never seen before. If this is the case, your spouse may be trying to hide money on a separate account.
- Monthly Post Office Receipts – Following with the sign above, if your spouse starts to receive monthly receipts from the post office, Or you identify a monthly recurring charge on your bank statement, it’s possible that your spouse is using a Post Office Box to receive the bank or credit card statements we mentioned above.
- Over Paying Credit Card Debt – When a person overpays a credit card bill, they often times get a “positive credit” on their account. Some spouses use credit cards to hide money from their spouse by over paying and creating a nice nest egg. Here is a bit more information on how this works – Credit Card Over Payments.
- Paying for Fake Employees – If your spouse is a small business owner, they could be paying a fake employee and instead be depositing the money on a secret account under the fake employee’s name.
- Lack of money in the account – there never seems to be enough money in your personal / joint accounts. This is a difficult pill to swallow, especially in our current economy. Oftentimes, the couple may be trying to save as much money as possible, cutting into expenses on the monthly basis, and still find themselves coming up short at the end of the month. It’s possible that your spouse may be hiding money or paying for assets on the side to prepare for a divorce.
These signs could have legitimate answers, but if you and your spouse are going through a “rough” patch and you feel like you may be getting divorce – AND – you identify some of the signs listed above. It’s possible that your spouse could be hiding money or assets from you.
We suggest that you get help from a professional. Whether that’s contacting our private investigative firm and requesting a free case evaluation or contacting your personal attorney. Hidden assets are difficult to uncover the longer your spouse has time to hide them.
