When you recognise this you will have a choice; sit staring at the oncoming menace like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a truck, or prepare for the day of war.
What to do or not do is a vast subject that would fill libraries, but here are my "top five" basic pointers! Learn the lessons and they will help you survive.
- Do not escalate the problems by confrontation. To protect your assets you need time. Bringing matters to a head will merely deprive you of the time you need to plan and put your affairs in the best shape for the divorce. You must learn to be cunning and wait your time. Bite your lip; keep your thoughts to yourself and make your plans. That will be the most satisfying rward in the end, believe me.
- Move your financial records out of the home . Do this quietly to a place where she cannot access them and do it preferably without her knowledge. If she notices say your accountant needed them, think of some reason. In every divorce I have seen the wife ALWAYS, BUT ALWAYS copied the financial records of her husband where she had opportunity; her lawyer will tell her to do so before papers are served. Information is key in financial negotiations. Keep her and her lawyer in the dark as much as you can. If they have information they have the initiative; if they don't then you have the initiative as to what to tell and what to do, subject to the obvious limitations of what she already has knowledge of.
- Get a private mail address and your own a safety deposit box. Have bank statements, life insurance or pension correspondence and any other personal mail redirected. Don't forget to get any lawyer's communication redirected here as well as tax authority communications. It could be your office if that would work for you or a commercially rented box if you need to. Just do it! Again this is to prevent unknown information seepage. Similarily get a new e-mail address she never finds out about. Only access it from work, NEVER the computer at home! All private stuff you do not want her to know about should go through this new e-mail account. The other stuff can go through the old account she knows about. If there are things you have done on a computer she has access to, blame a virus and do a total clean of the hard drive and a reconstruct using the factory supplied discs. Tedious I know but it is the only way to insure your private emails and documents are fully wiped out from prying eyes.
- Get your own Bank account apart from any joint accounts. Again do this without fuss or argument, and don't stop everything going into the joint account if there is one, that would be too marked a hange of behaviour. Do it without arousing suspicion. I would advise that you do not even take the bank card home; store it and all the account details in your safety deposit box or in a safe and private place at your business.
- Clean out your wallet and pockets daily before going home. Do Not take home receipts you do not want your wife to see, like the one for the mail box or safety box! Every wife I've seen goes through her husband's pockets and wallet. Do not present her with information she doesn't need. Just allow the normal innoccuous mess of harmless meaningless papers you don't care about and that will not tell her anything.
These are matters of self discipline and good "house-keeping". Remember the foundation of ALL asset protection strategies is financial privacy. Control what she knows and you get ahead of the game. Her lawyers will know this too and for that reason will tell her to get as much information as she can BEFORE a divorce starts.
Here is my final recommendation; even if you don't think it will ever come to divorce, do these things anyway! It just means if you are wrong, you'll have limited the damage.
These are the starter issues, I could go on and on but that is for another time.
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