Choosing to end a relationship that spouses expected to last for life can be quite challenging. People often become emotional and act in ways that they usually would not. In certain scenarios, the misconduct of one spouse before or during divorce can affect the outcome of the process.
Some people act out in the early stages of divorce or toward the end of the marriage while the relationship declines. Their conduct can have negative implications for the marital estate. For example, one spouse might accrue thousands of dollars in credit card debt on unnecessary spending in the weeks before they file for divorce. They may have wasted hundreds of dollars a month attempting to hide an extramarital affair.
People reviewing financial records as they prepare for divorce are often angry when they discover that the spouse has wasted or destroyed marital resources. What options do spouses have when significant financial misconduct occurs shortly before or during a divorce?
Dissipation can influence property division
Typically, judges dividing marital property do not consider marital misconduct when deciding how to allocate property and responsibility for marital debts. However, intentional dissipation of assets is an exception to that rule. If financial documentation supports claims of dissipation, a judge may factor the intentional waste into the final distribution of marital resources.
For example, a spouse conducting an affair may have purchased a second mobile phone. They may have paid for hotel rooms and romantic dinners, possibly even vacations that they claimed were business trips. The other spouse can quantify the amount wasted on an extramarital affair and then ask the courts to hold the other spouse accountable for those debts or to consider the amount of wasted income when dividing other marital property.
If one spouse destroyed, threw away, gave away or sold marital assets for unreasonable prices, proof of that dissipation could also influence property distribution decisions. The more that one spouse wasted or destroyed, the bigger the impact their misconduct could have on the final outcome of the property division process.
Carefully reviewing financial records can help people pursue appropriate property division outcomes when they divorce. The dissipation of marital assets can alter the final distribution of property in a litigated divorce.
