Subpoena all banking records to find missing transactions

After my husband and I began the divorce process, I was astonished to discover that $125,000 of money my husband told me we had put away had vanished into thin air. He is a meticulous record-keeper and handled all the finances throughout our 23-year marriage. He has testified under oath that we spent money on trips and clothes during the years before we separated, and denies there is any other money. Even though I know this is not true, I can’t prove otherwise. My lawyer has been through our tax returns and my husband’s records and can find nothing out of the ordinary but I know I am being skunked. I now think my husband has been planning this for years and has socked the money away somewhere. How can money disappear from sight?

It can’t, but sometimes you just have to dig a little deeper than just reviewing tax returns. There are several ways in which a spouse may try to make money disappear. For example, by purchasing a deferred annuity, a single premium life insurance policy, or United States Savings Bonds, the owner can watch an investment grow on a tax-deferred basis meaning there are no tax records of current earnings until money is removed. If the annuity, insurance policy, or savings bonds are not reported on the family court financial disclosure form, it will take some additional digging to find the source of cash.

We suggest that you ask your lawyer to subpoena banking records to secure copies of the transactions your husband “can’t find.” Look for checks to an insurance company or the U.S. Government. Or, if the money came out of the bank by way of cashier’s checks, you should be able to get these also.

We suggest that you begin checking four or five years back because these things don’t happen overnight. If you can’t prove your point with these records, then maybe you really did spend it or it wasn’t there in the first place.

When my daughter, now 35, divorced three years ago, her ex-husband agreed to indemnify her from tax liabilities and all family debt. She has remarried, has a good job, and is ready to buy a home; however, when she and her new husband applied for a loan, they discovered that tax liens had been filed against her. This, of course, caused the financing process to come to a screeching halt. We can’t find her ex-husband to bring him to court. I would like to help them get their home but, being divorced myself, I don’t want to risk my assets without some kind of assurances better than those my daughter received.

Indemnifications, as you see, can be rather useless unless secured by assets. That said, assuming you pass the credit test, you and your new son-in-law could purchase the house as joint tenants, and both of you could sign the note and mortgage.

At the same time, you and he should also be in a position to disentangle yourself from the arrangement if, for example, your daughter’s marriage terminates, your son-in-law fails to make the payments, or you or your son-in-law dies.

Without a definitive co-ownership agreement that covers everything from your right to rent the residence if payments are not made, to who pays for repairs, to how the equity will be divided if the house sells, you can expect that future problems could become most difficult and expensive.