How Financial Control Impacts Divorce and Your Future

If you don't know much about the finances in your marriage, and you walk up to your spouse and ask, can I see the bank accounts? Can I see the credit card statements? Can I see last year's tax returns? They say, "No." You might be a victim of financial abuse. Financial abuse is when one of the partners in a marriage decides that we're not going to disclose income.

We're not gonna give you access to income. We're gonna cut you off. We're gonna have you on a limited budget. We're gonna control you. That's power, that's abuse. They may even interfere with your ability to get a job or keep a job. I'm Jim Kraayeveld, founding and lead attorney at Kraayeveld Family Law. Yes.
Traditionally, it's been the man with the business may have millions and cuts his wife off. Granted, lately we see more and more that there are cases where the woman is the main financial support in the family, and the man all of a sudden is left destitute. Had one of those cases recently, but it's more prevalent the old-fashioned way, if you will.

If that is the case, it's really tough to leave a marriage like that because you don't have the financial means to hire a good attorney, to go do the discovery, to fight, to determine what the business is worth, to find the hidden assets. You may have a spouse that is putting money in offshore accounts, is hiding accounts in different bank accounts.

And until you hire an attorney and they start doing discovery, and you do the paper trail, finding the accounts and find out where the money went, which can cost a lot of time and money, you may not have any idea where it went. But if that is the case, get a good attorney who knows how to do that paper trail, knows how to hire experts like an accountant, who can do a forensic review to determine where did the money go.

?But not every case that has one party being responsible for the finances and the other party being responsible for some other component of the family life is financial abuse. There are plenty of healthy situations where one person is a CPA and she does all of the finances, does the bookkeeping, balances the checkbook.

The man just simply says, "Fine, I'm good. You give me whatever money I need, and we pay the bills and we do whatever." And it works. But when you go and ask to say, "Can I see a bank account? Can I see a tax return? Can I see what's going on? Can you explain where our assets are, what our income is?" And they won't tell you, there's a concern.

As a practical matter, what happens if the person who has typically done all of the finances is ill or dies? It's just a good common-sense thing to do on occasion to at least have an idea where is everything at, in case if something would happen. But those are the pros and cons or if you will, is there financial abuse or is there not?

My perspective, after doing this for over three decades. Until next time.