Another expensive divorce in the UK? Even after a Pre nup!

You have to feel sorry for Stuart Crossley. Not financially, he is worth around £50 million! No, for his choice in wives and his optimism!

He married Susan (nee Dean) in January 2006 having met her about 3 months previously. She had been married 3 times previously ( interestingly always to very wealthy men, thats interesting) and on each occasion had left richer than she had arrived at the altar. When she married Stuart she was worth about £20million, mostly from her last Divorce in 2000 when she'd scooped £16million from Robert Sangster, heir to the Vernon Pools Empire.

Stuart must have thought he'd protected himself by getting her to sign a pre nup in which she promised not to pursue his fortune if the marriage failed. Even though not legally binding in the U.K. a pre nup is still "taken into account" by British Courts, especially in cases like the Crossleys' where the marriage only lasted a few months! Yes, they seperated in June/July 2006 after marrying in January of that year.

I know you will be stunned to know that although Susan, as the doll she is, promised not to pursue his fortune, guess what, she is pursuing his fortune after all! She says the pre nup should not stand because he had not told her about all his assets and he has secret funds stashed in Andorra and Monaco.

Lessons to be learned? Simple.

1. Wise men do not imagine that a leopard - or in this case a cougar - will ever change its spots!

2. Wiser men stash funds in secret because pre nups are open to challenge by an angry cougar.

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Five things Men should do when they see divorce coming!

Maybe you've never seen a rattle snake before but I'll bet the first time you do you'll still recognise it! So it is with divorce. You may never have gone through one before, but intuitively you'll just know when it's on it's way. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not even this year- but you still know it's going to come; some day.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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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A Multi Millionaire shows how to protect your Assets in divorce.

Mr and Mrs Mubarak have spent more than £4m in legal costs so far in their divorce/financial settlement case. Their case shows the inability of the U.K.'s family justice system to enforce divorce awards against former husbands whose wealth is tied up in trusts, off-shore structures and other asset protection strategies!

Asset protection Planning working in divorce.

Mubarik has run up a bill of more than £2m in costs to avoid paying his former wife, Aaliya, a lump sum of almost £5m, an amount the high court ordered him to pay nearly eight years ago. The pair although resident in the U.K. for tax purposes and liable to English taxation, manage to avoid paying any tax at all! You see some wealth preservation strategies do not need to be just about divorce, the good advice if acted upon can have tax benefits as well.

Note one of the simple things Mr. Mubarak did; The couple, come from prosperous families in the Kashmir region of India and lived in Kuwait and Hong Kong before moving to London in 1997. Mubarik's companies have business interests at the first two locations and there are also shops in Paris and New Bond Street, in London. The shares in his worldwide empire are owned by a family trust in Jersey, which has complicated his former wife's efforts to acquire his assets. Asset protection planning at it's best! These assets are hidden in the open yet so no one can get at them.

Pre Divorce Strategist at work!

Mubarik put his net worth at £8m in the divorce proceedings, but Mr Justice Bodey ruled that he had substantial undisclosed assets and ordered him to pay £4.875m.
In nearly eight years his former wife has managed to get only £266,000 of that, via the forced sale of Mubarik's properties. (Disappointed, baby?!)

Who says Asset protection strategies do not work? Mr. Mubarik obviously had good advice, I wonder from whom?

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Five signs you are heading for divorce and need a wealth protection strategy!

Sometimes I am asked by clients whether they are "paranoid" in thinking their marriage is heading down the tube. I am usually advising them about issues of asset protection and various wealth protection strategies and they are beginning to wonder is it all necessary; maybe they were just being "paranoid"? I usually ask some questions to find out why they feel things are not going well. Generally I find that despite their reputation, mens' intuition in these matters equals that of any woman; perhaps it is heightened by the pressure or stress that a failing marriage brings or perhaps the stereo-typical picture of an insensitive man is wrong - as most stereotypes are.

Here are five tell-tale signs that things are not as they should be.

1) Attention changes. Either the wife pays more attention to the husband due to guilt or else seems to find fault with the husband, because she tries to justify the affair in their mind.

2) Sex changes; this can be less interest in sex or indeed occasionally more interest.

3) Money changes. Try and keep a check on where the money goes; if she is more cautious with spending, it is often because there are additional expenses you don't know about. Sometimes a wife starts spending far more than previously on household or family outgoings. This may mean she has received legal advice and be increasing her "financial needs". This is your wife doing her little bit of pre divorce planning.

4) Personal changes; watch out for habit changes in gym attendance, new more sexy clothes in the cupboard - but not used for you! New hair styles, new perfumes, indeed any significant change of routine can signify a change of of object of desire.

5) Phone changes. Maybe a wife whispers on the phone and abruptly changes voice tone or hangs up when you come into the room. Check her mobile account, especially calls made to the same number after leaving for work or just before coming back from work.


As you wll have noticed all of these are behavioural changes of one form or another, because when a person knows their personal relationship is wrong their behaviour changes. Emotional detachment from you signifies a lot. Avoiding communication or talking signifies that the relationship is not on course. When she avoids either connection to her husband or from her obligations as a wife or mother and starts prioritising her needs and desires and behaving as if it is purely her life and she wants to live it her own way rather than with you, then break-up will follow. Sometimes she will accuse you of having an affair as a way of distracting attention.

When you discover some of these changes do not confront your wife as this will only mean she adjusts her behaviour and makes it more difficult for you to keep track of what she is doing. To the same degree that your wife's behaviour has changed because she knows she is turning her back on her relationship with you, so you must make sure that your behaviour does not change to alert her to your suspicions. Instead, keep things as "normal" as possible and do some "pre divorce planning" and exercises in "wealth and asset protection" for the day that comes. Just as she is "playing a game" with you, so you must learn to play the same game in reverse while you protect your assets and wealth and work out a divorce strategy.

Next time, I'll tell you five simple things you should do immediatley you become suspicious to protect your wealth and assets before the divorce war to follow.

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Americans hide EVEN MORE of their assets from their partners than Britons.

Forbes recently published the results of a study of 433 U.S. citizens, whose wealth ranked between $1 million to over $10 million. One interesting finding was that 56% of women said they had hidden or protected assets from their partners, while 36% of the men said they had done so.

Note that guys, 20% more of the female of the species than the male hide assets from their Partner! Think about it!

Of those surveyed with more than $10 million, they were 3 times more likely to have hidden or protected assets than those with less than $10 million. Yes, thats right! Three times more likely! Well, when the stakes are higher, more people play!

The article went on to say that most assets were not hidden by "legal" devices, but by wealth preservation strategies - thats my bag!

To me however the most interesting factor was not commented on by the article; namely these assets were not hidden by people in the middle of divorce or marriage difficulties; no, they're hidden by ordinary - well ordinary multi-millionaires - BEFORE the s**t hits the fan. When America coughs, they say Europe gets a cold 5 years later. The way divorce settlements in the Europe and especially the U.K. are going increasingly in favour of the wife, more and more British men will catch up with the American experience and hide their assets from their partners. Watch this space......

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Increasingly Britons Hide Assets from Partners.

Well, it is official - nearly a third of married partners in the U.K. hide financial details from their spouse!

They lie about salary, savings and debts according to recent survey by Carter Allen Bank. This isn't just lying about the cost of a purchase, ( 44% said they'd done that!) No, 10% said they had a secret savings account, and 9% said they had a secret credit card, but - the big news? That's the fact 2% per cent have assets, that they keep secret, That's right, two out of every hundred people hide ASSETS from their partner/spouse, investment properties and other major assets of value.

Now some may bemoan the fact this shows trust between partners is dead, but actually that isn't the case, because if you think about it, the survey shows that 98% of people DO NOT hide Assets from their partners. With divorce affecting approximatley 33% of marriages the fact ONLY 2% hide Assets is the real surprise! Trust isn't dead, and neither is blind optimism despite all the evidence!! Even if it is only 2%, it feels good to be making a difference!

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What your wife WILL do in pre divorce planning.

I am often told by new clients how they cannot believe that THEIR wife would do anything underhand to them in the course of a divorce. I am also often told by new clients how they cannot believe what THEIR wife did, not just in the course of the divorce, but even before a divorce case was launched! Square the circle folks and you find as I do that if you scratch the surface, all women in or contemplating a divorce will do remarkably similar things to undermain a man's asset protection strategies.

To illustrate the point I recently read an online article by a U.S. divorce lawyer as advice to women on finding out as much as possible about a spouses financial and business affairs PRIOR to divorce. It makes interesting reading for those of us on the other side of the fence, namely seeking to protect assets and wealth in divorce. She stressed the need to find out as much as possible about a husbands business and financial affairs BEFORE the divorce was launched; this included opening mail, making a note of Bank account details, requesting copies of tax returns the wife had signed for as many years as possible and where she had not signed, then if she had access to his place of business going there and trying to find them. She also advised about "suspicious" transfers to others and valuing assets like paintings and other art.

It just reinforces one of the points that I always make; financial privacy is the key to asset and wealth protection. Keep confidential matters confidential and they have a good chance of remaining confidential; fail to, and you will constantly be chasing after your wife and her divorce lawyer to react to their next legal move on foot of what they know about your financial affairs.

If you don't think your wife would do these things as pre divorce planning then WAKE UP AND SMELL THE ROSES! I'm telling you, I cannot remember a case where a wife DID NOT go through her husbands mail to find details of bank statements, accountants' advice, life policies etc. As sure as "eggs is eggs", SHE WILL DO IT!!!!! - Think guys, she may even be doing it today!!!

On a final point, you will notice that the lawyer refers to a wife getting copies of the tax returns she has signed. Apart from her own individual tax returns, she can only legitimatley get other returns where she has signed either as a partner or a Company Director. The lesson? It may seem obvious, but if your wife is a partner or an officer of your company that is something that needs to be resolved BEFORE she thinks that your doing so is a problem!

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