Hiding Money From Your Spouse Has Gotten Harder

[Hum]

It's getting a lot tougher to keep a secret stash.

It's a sad but true fact of marriage: Troubled couples often try to hide money from each other, whether to spend it on extramarital mischief or keep from sharing it in a divorce. They might do anything from stashing wads of money in a safe-deposit box to setting up a secret online brokerage account to build up funds on the sly.

But however they do it, let the hiders be warned: Electronic discovery is making it a lot easier to uncover all that covert activity.

Suspicious spouses might dig around in their partners' Web-surfing history and social networks to find traces of hidden bank accounts and business deals. They might install software on home computers that records every keystroke their spouses make?whether it's secret stock trades or cash transfers to paramours?and use smartphone and GPS tools to show when they've been making sneaky withdrawals from ATMs.

Meanwhile, divorce lawyers and forensic experts are employing new strategies of their own. Instead of having to sift through reams of paper records to find irregularities, they're now able to use advanced search tools to analyze thousands of digital bank statements, credit-card bills and other files in the blink of an eye.

"While in the past a paper trail might be hidden by a second set of books or the shredding of documents, the trail left by files on a computer is etched onto a hard drive somewhere, just waiting to be discovered," says Ken Altshuler, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

Is it legal for spouses to use these methods to find electronic evidence? That's another matter entirely. The law is still evolving, and there are still gray areas about what practices are acceptable.

It's legal, for instance, to do a Google search on a spouse. But it's potentially illegal to hack into a spouse's personal password-protected smartphone or Facebook page, or to secretly install a GPS in their car or to install keystroke monitors on somebody's computer.

There are also gray areas about what's admissible in court?it can vary not only from state to state but also from court to court within a state. Generally, though, information that is obtained illegally is inadmissible in court.

The price of obtaining evidence illegally, of course, is potentially much higher than that. A person who uncovers information illegally could lose all credibility in court, and his or her attorney may not be able to present any evidence on that issue. On top of that, the person could go to jail, while the lawyer could face hefty fines or lose his or her license if caught using illegally obtained evidence.

Little wonder that lawyers say they advise clients to do nothing illegal. Still, they say, often angry spouses go ahead anyway, determined to get information?and convinced that all's fair when it comes to a lying spouse. They feel that uncovering the truth is worth the risks, if they even think about the risks at all.

Even if spouses can't use the information in court, the lawyers say, the knowledge empowers them in negotiations. And once they know about the assets, they sometimes can look for legal ways to ferret out the same information.

Part of the reason electronic discovery is booming is that more people are using technology to hide assets in the first place. They set up covert business deals using text messages or social networks, for instance, or figure out ways to create cash hoards online.

According to the National Endowment for Financial Education, 31% of U.S. adults who combined assets with a spouse or partner say they have been deceptive about money, and 58% of these adults say they hid cash from their partner or spouse.

full article

[Dick Montage]

I have a fair few thousand quid my estranged wife neither knows about nor will ever have access to. Not been a problem for me?

[Farstrider]

I have a fair few thousand quid my estranged wife neither knows about nor will ever have access to. Not been a problem for me?

Now she knows! :laugh: You have left some traces on the interwebs because of this post!

[Shahrad]

Thing is what you do is find somehwre good to hide it and odnt be obsesed with going to it every 5minutes making sur eits there, someone preferably where its not registered ot anything and your done! Simple or how about WORK ON YOUR ****ING MARRIAGE COS NOT ALL WOMEN/MEN ARE SCUM!

[Dick Montage]

WORK ON YOUR ****ING MARRIAGE COS NOT ALL WOMEN/MEN ARE SCUM

Some things are way beyond work!

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

I do not hide money from my wife she does does not hide it from me (unless she gets it in a manner other than a pay check.

We share a bank account and have our pay directly deposited into it. we then each transfer a specific amount off into a private account that we can do whatever we want with.

[The Laughing Man]

If you have to hide money from your spouse then you have some serious trust issues to work out.

[Dick Montage]

If you have to hide money from your spouse then you have some serious trust issues to work out.

Or a wife who is terrible with finances and lies about it. It's not always wrong to distrust.

[chrisj1968]

trust issues.. why did you ever marry in the first place is more like it.

[c.grz]

The only time I hide money from my spouse is around special occasions like birthday, anniversary or the holidays. We share our bank account so I keep money stashed away so I can purchase her gifts without her knowing.

[tiagosilva29]

I don't need to hide money because I don't have any.

[Joseph B]

Trust issues have nothing to do with dosh.

Money does things to people, evil, vile things. And yes, I stash. I stash a lot.

[fbsduser]

My money is always hidden in my desktop pc, in the drive cage under the hdd.

[Hum]

I bury my money in Mason jars, in the back woods ... no one will ever think to look there ... :shiftyninja: