After the wedding, a married life takes flight. Newlyweds, likely never give a second thought about terms like equitable distributions or community properties. When a marriage ends in divorce, however, tough decisions have to be made by both parties and difficult discussions — including those concerning the fair division of property once shared during the union.
In an ideal situation, the couple can decide to work together on how to split up property, debts and assets without legal interferences. When that’s just not possible because of a dispute or a complex issue regarding the ownership or value of property, both spouses may have no other option but to hire attorneys to negotiate on their behalf or even go to court and ask a judge to divide the marital estate (property owned jointly by the couple).
There are typically three factors that play into deciding how to divide up the property: the type of divorce you’re seeking, what kind of property you own and the state where you currently reside
Normally, equitable distribution applies only to marital property. This includes properties acquired during the marriage. Marital property does not include, however, property obtained during marriage by gift, bequest, devise or descent, or property otherwise provided for in a written agreement. Such property, along with any assets acquired before or after marriage, is considered the separate property of the acquiring spouse.
The kind of situation can result in an unbalanced outcome to divorce proceedings. Hence People often see this as a judicial unfairness, because a spouse could lose everything in a divorce. Which could lead a spouse to hiding assets.
Hiding assets is one way an unscrupulous spouse may try to influence an unfair outcome to the asset division process.
When divorced couple think of hiding assets, images of stacks of cash in a secret safe or an offshore bank account that no one but the owner knows about is conjured prior to the divorce process.
Divorcing spouses never get everything they want in a divorce settlement. Instead, most divorces require compromise from both sides in order to resolve the case. As a result, many divorced spouses believe that they got a raw deal. This doesn’t mean that they all have grounds to head back to court
However, we advise that if a couple feel they received a truly unfair or unjust divorce settlement, they may be able to ask a court to reopen your case and take a second look at how the deal was made and whether or not it’s unjust. The exact legal showing you need to make will depend on the specific laws of your state, but generally speaking, This usually means that you have to prove that the settlement agreement itself is invalid for some reason and/or that the enforcement of the terms of the agreement would be oppressive, inequitable, and/or unjust.