Property division orders can be set aside at times post-divorce. It wasn’t too long ago that such a request was made in the state of New York. In this case, assets divided in divorce included a brokerage account with the infamous Bernie Madoff. The husband, who had given the wife a substantial settlement based on assets held in his name including the Madoff account, claimed that the settlement should be reopened because the assets were worth less than originally claimed. The case was discussed by Gale Burns at National Legal Research GroupAll in Investigations.
The divorce decree order was not reopened for a variety of reasons including that the divorce occurred several years before Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was revealed and secondly, unexpected losses after dissolution of marriage, although unfortunate, do not have a bearing on the prior agreement.
One of the bits of information I gleaned from the article was that the account in question was not indentified specifically in the settlement agreement. There was mention of stock and brokerage accounts, but each account was not delineated.
I am not saying this particular couple was attempting to hide anything from the other, but in some cases of divorce or legal separation hidden assets are an issue. We know because is asked to locate hidden assets including hidden back accounts, hidden retirement funds and just good ol’ hidden money. Hiding money in a divorce is not uncommon.
The thing about hidden assets these days is that assets can be converted and stashed away all over the world. How to find hidden assets locally, nationally or internationally takes special resources. In addition to being known as a top Indiana asset search investigator, we find international accounts and locate off shore accounts with a global network of databases and resources that are available only to the highest level of unknown asset search investigators.
The good news is that uncovering marital assets can be the cause for reopening a settlement agreement. The caveat is that there are statutes of limitations. For instance, in Indiana, the request must be made to the courts within seven years of the original agreement.
A divorce asset investigator on the level of can conduct a statewide asset search and a nationwide asset search to find unknown assets or locate hidden stocks and bonds as well as internationally.
The results an attorney gets for his client may depend on having a hidden asset investigator with the experiences and resources at hand.
-Brenda McGinley, CEO, All in Investigations, All in Investigations