During divorce proceedings, you must disclose your assets. This is true of both contested and uncontested divorce. If you and your spouse cannot reach an agreement, there is always a chance that he or she may choose to hide assets.
If you have any suspicion that your soon-to-be former spouse hid assets from you or the court, there are a few ways that you can confirm your suspicions. Forbes explains how to find hidden assets.
Where can you find the red flags?
The biggest red flags will be in your past tax returns. Tax return discrepancies can highlight hidden assets. Itemized deductions such as deducted property taxes may reveal hidden property. Capital gains and losses can also help you to identify any new assets or disappearance of assets that your spouse listed previously.
To identify red flags, take an inventory of all your assets. Then, compare the assets to the interest and dividends to spot undisclosed assets or disappearing assets.
What are the usual hiding spots?
There are a few typical hiding spots where people may choose to conceal their assets. If you want to try to track down the hidden assets, you need to know where to look for them. If you ask your spouse about hidden assets, odds are that he or she will deny the existence of the asset. To hide an asset, a person may claim the asset lost, create a false debt to pay off, or transfer the asset to a third party. The difficult part about hidden assets is proving that your spouse hid the assets. Typically, hidden assets leave a paper trail.