wife buying and hiding assets before divorce

[dadontherocks]

Just discovered my wife has been buying new furniture etc. amounting to thousands of $ over (at least) the past year and these items are not in my house. She has been having an affair for years (also recently discovered) and secretly bought a condo, which I assume the furniture is for.
I was not aware of the funds leaving our joint bank account slowly being drained over time and never saw any of the purchases.

Is this a criminal act? I have just diverted my salary to a personal account to stop this and will start the process of disclosure to make her accountable for the expenses me and my 3 kids have never seen.

What can I do to claw this back? I will be filing for divorce ASAP and try my best to get her out of the house. She visits her boyfriend 2-3 times a week as it is, but won't move in with him, at least not until she's got the best $ deal and ruined me and the kids.

[standing on the sidelines]

start getting a paper trail to show all that she is doing this, especiallly the condo if its in her name.

[rmccallion]

I'd doubt that it was a criminal act at all. If the funds were in a joint account, then she had as much legal right to spend it as you, there's nothing illegal about it. My first bit of advice is to stop having a joint account. Keep all paperwork.

If she has been diverting funds to her account, then your job will be slightly easier as you can then request her bank statements which shows the spending. This would have to be reflected in her net family assets as part of the equalization process, but if you've accumulated much more assets than her, then you're going to be out of luck. I can't see this affecting much other than the equalization,but I might be wrong. If she's bought a condo, and you can prove it, then she WILL need to list that as an asset in her financial disclosure. However, even if she used all of the joint money for it, I think that the best that you can hope for is to get half of it back.

[cashcow4ex]

Well if she secretly purchased the condo while you were together, then thats a marital asset and it is half yours. Have her pay you half of its value or have her sell it and give you half of the proceeds.

If she purchased the condo after your seperation with both your money I would still think that you have some claim to it.

[rmccallion]

Well, if she had the money before the separation date and bought it after, then it is still an asset, half of which the OP would have been entitled to. I'd assume that this money wasn't squirreled away from the joint account after the separation date, so I think that this would be safe to assume. Regardless, you're right that he'd POTENTIALLY have claim to half of it, but it really depends on his net increase of assets during the marriage. If he had a ton of asset growth, then effectively, he might not get a dime from the condo, but it would reduce the claim she had on his increase of assets.

To kind of clarify & reiterate...say for example that for the condo, she used all of the money from their joint account. The most that he effectively would have had claim to would have been half of it. She had as much "right" to spend from that account as he did - it was a joint account. The only impact of this is in terms of equalization.