0:04
so unfortunately people try to often
0:07
hide assets during a divorce we find
0:09
this very often you know I can’t tell
0:12
you how many times someone comes into my
0:14
office and they have a spreadsheet of
0:15
all the assets and they say you know my
0:17
spouse gave me the spreadsheet of all
0:19
the assets and we say that’s great but
0:22
we should still do the discovery and go
0:25
through the documents and exchange the
0:26
statements of net worth to make sure and
0:29
I can tell you we have found literally
0:31
millions of dollars that were left off
0:33
those those spreadsheets that were
0:35
so-called accurate spreadsheets you know
0:38
one way to hide assets and and I always
0:41
look at this on tax returns is on the
0:43
tax return you may actually decide that
0:47
you were going to overpay your taxes and
0:50
so if you overpay your taxes hoping that
0:53
your divorce will end and the refund
0:55
goes into your next year’s tax return
0:58
well you may have actually just hden an
1:00
asset and so it’s very important that
1:02
your attorney check those tax returns
1:05
where there is a line for refunds and
1:08
see if there is an overpayment of taxes
1:11
and if you were entitled to that another
1:14
way people actually um I would say hide
1:16
money is that they don’t reveal what
1:19
their bonus structure is or they defer
1:21
their bonus over years and they may
1:24
actually decide that they’re going to
1:26
defer their compensation in some ways
1:29
and work out some sort of a mechanism
1:31
with their employer who probably will be
1:33
all too happy to do this right to defer
1:36
the the compensation so that they’re not
1:39
actually getting their compensation at
1:40
the appropriate time by deferring that
1:43
compensation a the person who is not
1:47
person receiving the compensation is
1:49
going to have a more difficult time
1:50
figuring out what is the actual
1:52
compensation and of course then it also
1:55
could result in a different formula of
1:58
what the spouse actually
2:00
is entitled to and when I say that the
2:02
spouse who is not the working spouse who
2:04
is supposed to receive the bonus so I
2:07
would look at compensation that’s a
2:08
place that people hide assets um
2:11
restricted stock units people don’t
2:12
always reveal those restricted stock
2:14
units that they receive that’s real
2:16
compensation it is deferred usually over
2:19
a three or five year period unless it’s
2:22
some sort of a cliff vest where it all
2:24
vests at one time they may not reveal
2:26
that you may need to dig a little
2:28
further to get that information
2:30
information another place is if there’s
2:32
monies that are in trust they may not
2:35
reveal that they have those assets that
2:37
there are distributions coming to them
2:40
so you need to actually look at it and
2:42
you need to be very careful about going
2:44
through all of the discovery documents
2:46
it’s important to review the
2:48
documentation