The longer you have remained married and the more financially successful you were during the marriage, the harder it can be to split up your property. You and your spouse may have acquired a variety of assets, from real property and personal possessions to stocks and retirement savings.
When you file for divorce in Texas, almost everything that the two of you accumulated during the marriage is potentially subject to division under community property laws. However, there are many people who don’t want to share everything that they should with their spouse when they divorce. These bitter individuals don’t care about breaking the law if they think it will help them “win” in the divorce proceedings.
They may hide property or money from the courts or their spouse in the hopes of keeping those assets for themselves. What can you do if you think your spouse may have hidden property?
Review your financial records carefully
Tax paperwork, income statements and even bank account records can help you track down missing income or identify undervalued property. Of course, it can be prohibitively time-consuming and complex to make sense of household financial records during your divorce.
Many people turn to forensic accountants as a way of making sense of their tangled financial records. If a financial specialist locates hidden assets or you identify property not included in the disclosures your spouse makes to the family courts, you can then present your own evidence.
Know the impact of hidden assets
If left undiscovered, those hidden assets would have unfairly deprived you of your share of your community property. As such, the judges in Texas family law cases tend to impose a penalty against those who attempted to hide resources during their divorce proceedings. Judges may award you more of the marital estate than they otherwise would when you can prove that your spouse intentionally hid property or undervalued assets as a form of manipulation in the divorce.
Learning more about the factors that may influence complex property division matters in a Texas divorce can help you obtain a fair and appropriate outcome to your dissolution proceedings, even if your spouse engages in financial obfuscation or similar misconduct.