[OSL]

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This is an important topic for this forum. I'm not sure if it's out there somewhere already but I can't seem to find it.

In the context of love, relationships, and marriage, I believe that many of us will eventually get married and, when that happens, we will be totally blind to the potential disasters that might befall us. We'll tell ourselves "no, it's impossible that THIS ONE would do it to me - it would never happen"

As such, I wanted to bring up the topic of planning out something along the lines of the following:

1. Having a passport from a developed western nation where feminism is rampant and you are likely to have your assets seized in a divorce (UK, US, Canada, Europe, Australia) - but do NOT get married there lest you be thrown to the wolves

2. Keeping your assets in a jurisdiction such as Singapore or Hong Kong

3. Marry a national from a country like Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Thailand, Japan - preferably a well educated elite who was raised in a traditional family and has great values and a good education (I haven't done much research on the legal systems there though)

4. We are likely to fall in love with the women we date. The women we date, by default, will be in whatever countries we happen to spend our time in. Thus, we should source and identify those countries where the legal system is not likely to actively destroy men.

By doing so, even if we do fall head over heels in love and everything spirals out of our rational control, we've taken preventative measures beforehand to hedge the legal and financial risk if the worst happens.

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Questions I have as a result of this (and topics to discuss):

1. What countries have a legal system that does not destroy men?

2. Setting up trusts or accounts in safe neutral jurisdictions outside of your own passport nation and her passport nation

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[OSL]

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*CAVEAT*

I am not saying that the above things are my advice.

I am saying that these are my ASSUMPTIONS about what prudent divorce-proofing would be. I have no idea if any of those things are true but it seems pretty similar to any other sort of international asset protection strategy.

Would enjoy hearing other people's thoughts about this topic.

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[Kabal]

An excellent post from WallStreetOasis:

Quote:

In my earlier years I worked in audit, and was seconded onto forensic projects out of need for resource. I developed a knack for it, and have since worked on a lot of high profile cases (including some of the BB Banks and multi billionaires).

I’ve seen the evidence the forensic accountants get, how they analyse the data in front of them and how the whole process fits into a court case. Therefore I’m well placed to provide a few tips of how to defend yourself in such a case. This isn’t legal advice, your lawyers do that, it’s the accountant advice. It's also pretty long. Sorry about that.

To explain this properly, you need to understand the whole process and how it fits in under the legal system. So with a short run through of a typical process, with the reasoning behind it: You receive a letter from her legal team informing you of the legal proceedings against you, sometimes with an amount for an out of court settlement.

1.A court date is agreed, and one of 2 things happens. For the divorce, her legal team will appoint a bunch of forensic accountants to go through all your finances (yes you will have to declare “everything”) for them to go through. This court date will be requested based on her account of how complicated your finances are. If she says you just have a current account, savings account and some investments held at a bank, they will not need to ask for extra time to prepare their case.

2.Her lawyers need to build their case by the court date, but they have no evidence or facts. The forensic accountants are the ones that do that. So the forensic accountant minions need to trawl through the evidence, and collect it together into a summary of evidence, which the partner will then write in a report to either give to the lawyers, OR have to present in court himself (if he’s been hired as an expert witness).

3.The lawyers collect this report, integrate it with their own resourced information (her account), cherry picking the facts from it to best support their argument and will present it by the court date. The judge/jury will hear the case and make a decision based on this.

4.They will make a ruling which has the authority to transfer assets from one party to the other. The accountants do not.

A pretty bleak picture. But there is hope. Let’s look at the incentivisation structure of accountants, and the risk vs. Reward model of them. Bear with me, this will all make sense in the end.

a)First thing you’ll notice is bonuses are low, often lower than 10% of salary. Part of the ethical structure of accountancy firms forbids high bonuses, from their audit side. Remuneration is echoed across departments to stop mass exodus. This pay structure attracts people that are risk averse.

b)Secondly, what you won’t appreciate, is how few staff these departments have (even the massive ones). For cost reasons, they will have a low number of core staff, and when work comes in, they contract in new people for the duration, based on what they need, and tell them to go home afterwards.

c)Their value is their brand. (e.g. Arthur Andersen). If their name is no longer worth anything, then they lose everything. They will not risk their brand it for anything. They will only put their name to either certainties, or within certain parameters defined in their audit reports, hence the “from what we have seen” style lines you see in company filings.

d)Appraisal process is influenced heavily by costs and towing the line. We are encouraged to charge fewer hours, to increase the projects alleged profitability.

How can you use this to your advantage?

Ok your goal to avoid an amputation of assets is to disrupt the above sequence 1-4, by putting as many spanners in the processes that revolve around a-c, in any and every way legally possible.

Remember they’re unincentivised and paid the same regardless of the outcome of the case (they’re clever like that), so they either don’t care what their report shows or they won’t risk their brand on inconclusive evidence.

Also, any contract workers they bring in are paid by the hour, and are therefore incentivised for the job to go on for longer than it otherwise should.

Now to start being helpful.

Stop them having a full report by the court date:

Obfuscation
It’s really the oldest trick in the book. You have to hand over all the information you have regarding your accounts/assets. I’m sure you’d love to comply. Hand over everything. EVERYTHING, at least twice, as late as possible.

On a recent case, the evidence we received from the other side, was in pdf format. It was a scan of every document this guy had relating to his accounts. 19 Pdf’s in total, each about 13-17,000 pages long The files were a few GB in size, take 2-5 minutes to open, will frequently cause programmes (Word/Excel) to crash on company laptops (they won’t buy new ones in just for a one off job), cannot be emailed, can’t be worked on from home or remotely (since they don’t let temporary staff take data offsite). No coherent order, no page numbers, not even the right way up in a lot of cases, huge amounts of duplicates and about 80% of them were in Russian. (Documents in a different alphabet are really hard to identify conclusively as duplicates, having triplicates for these can give the impression you have more Russian accounts than you actually have, leading to them over hiring soviets and be under resourced in other departments).

The above is a stroke of genius on many levels. Firstly, the way that this information is entered into a computer system is, you guessed it, manually (because accountancy firms are technophobes, I was ordered not to use macros to generate over 200 pivot tables). While it isn’t typed up word for word, these documents are given a unique identifier by the lawyers, and then a spreadsheet or similar is drawn up to give a keyword summary search if you want to look for bank account numbers etc. Now if parts of this are in Russian, and some are in English, to understand them (and I mean to enable the English speaking lawyers to understand them), you need bilinguals. They will need to be hired in, by the accountancy firm. To keep costs down this will be done sparingly and cheaply, very unincentivised staff and quality control will be next to nonexistent. Additionally, anyone that has worked with a Russian translator, will know that if you give the same document to 3 different translators, you get 3 different translations back. This slows the whole process down, creating inaccuracies in their data set and gives them fewer days between then and the court date to work with.

If I were to improve on the above steps, I would use more banks, in more languages, in different date format zones. Liechtenstein, Cyprus, Switzerland all mix things up. You’d be amazed at the havoc dd/mm/yy can cause in a mm/dd/yy spreadsheet, especially when a trained unincentivised chimpanzee is doing the typing. Again, polluting the data set. One date wrong in a series of transactions and they have to start over again on the tracing process, with extra low morale and one angry manager.

Create Doubt:

So you have your set of holding companies across the globe. Of course they need funding. So you need to borrow money. From yourself. How do you do that? Well the best trick, that creates amazing amounts of paperwork is this:
You own entity A and C, that bank with D and F banks respectively.
Entity A wants to borrow $100 dollars. He agrees with the bank to borrow that money. But how does it get this 0% interest loan? Entity C will guarantee it, 100% and set aside the funds for it do to this in another account.

The agreements get drawn up, A borrows the money from D, while C transfer the money from its account in F to D. This $100 is now in D’s account. The bank does not have to disclose this to any court order, and never will. Therefore the link to this is now lost. ‘A’ instantly defaults on its’ loan repayments, and D claims the $100 from A. Money is transferred successfully, but there is no paper trail for the forensics to PROVE this (since to complete the transaction it will need access to Bank F’s statements, which the court order will not permit).

Additionally, they will need to dig up the following documents relating to this transaction: The loan agreement, the guarantee agreement AND the bank statements for both companies. Quite a bit longer than finding 1 bank statement from either company. It goes without saying the contract reference numbers for each of these should be very typoable. Imagine sifting through a dataset of the following reference styles using ctrl F to find it: 101110110101, 1Il (thats one “i and L”) 1o0 (ten zero, and 101 one hundred and one). This works best when crossing currencies, so bank F receives in it’s GBP account, and sends out in its $ account, registering different account numbers on the statements, extra fun confusion.

So if I create a new account for my amazing new holding company, entity B, transfer $100 into it from entity A, use that $100 to buy 1 share of a real company that actually does something, at $100, the accountants can easily conclude that I bought $100 worth of shares for entity A. What about if the account already had $1000 in it? What if that $1000 came from a loan from entity C which was an account funded by entity Z? Didn’t even know what entity Z is? Oh it’s in an Icelandic Bank (paper statements, obviously)? Time to call up the recruitment agency and find an Icelandic translator. They all add up to another few days killed off before the court deadline.

Teamwork: So you have a friend, Mr X. You transfer $100 to a join account you operate, and that account buys the $100 of the same shares above. The account was funded 80:20 by Mr X. Did you pay for that share or did he? Obviously his requires a friend you can trust that way.

Ultimately, the accountancy firm will need to sign a report, with their name on it, that states what they believe is the financial position at a specified date. The only person that knows the actual position is you, and you’ll only prove them wrong if they go too high. They get paid the same regardless of what they conclude, so will opt for the one that incurs the least cost and risk. Therefore they will be conservative, and only conclude on items they can trace completely within the time frame. Keep that as low as possible.

Beating Me
I’m probably your biggest nightmare on this, the smart ass who’s solid with numbers and technology. Number patterns, and account numbers, amounts, dates etc. will stick around in my head for a while. How best to render me useless? Language barriers, date formats, decimals and commas, cross currency transactions.

If I’m looking for a transaction that went out in dollars and came back in Turkish Lira, I have to go and check the exchange rate traded at, and the numbers don’t spring out as fast. Interrupt my work flow and add effort to the mental load, slow me down. It all adds to the stress in the environment, and just saying insufficient data to conclude is really tempting with no overtime or bonus even if it isn’t quite true. Noone checks for lack of evidence, they only check your evidence shows what you say it shows.

If we had infinite resource and time and cooperation, we’d get there in the end, however we don’t. Don’t even contemplate not handing everything over. The court will react badly to you being uncooperative and possibly land you with contempt of court.. The accountants won’t say “we saw a systematic trail of transactions deliberately designed to hide assets”, since that’s something they can’t back up with evidence, even though it’s obvious.

Disclaimer: For those with ethical concerns of a guide on how to deceive the financial world, the bad guys know the above, and more. This is purely for the cynically minded of you who despise your nation’s divorce settlements, and can’t/won’t get a prenup that the courts take seriously. Plus, when she gets feedback from her accountants that they haven’t found anything, and the fees are nearing a few hundred thousand, that out of court settlement looks really tempting, just on your terms, not hers.

[OSL]

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This is pretty brilliant. Thank you for posting that.

I feel like with all the FBAR reporting that you have to do with offshore accounts now, even if you DID have your money off shore, if you got sued in an American court you would be forced to repatriate your assets or face jail time.

Is this entire situation avoidable by simply not getting married in the US?

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[Jaydublin]

In the past few months I've been thinking the exact same way. Have that shit in order just in case you fall hard and it falls apart, especially if your from the western world and marry a local girl.

Don't let yourself get put in a situation where you have had your assets stolen and you're struggling just to pay your bills and child support.

[samsamsam]

I have mentioned it before, but I have been reading about irrevocable trusts. Separate the ownership and the beneficiary. This works better with liquid assets since they can be moved by your trustee to honor the trust guidelines. Also, helps because it is an't considered an asset when you are getting married so your pre-nup doesn't have to disclose it - or don't do a pre-nup at all.

This is all armchair quarterbacking on my part - a little knowledge is dangerous they say.

[Brodiaga]

Here is my take on this: just do not get married. Co-habit and have kids if you must, but don't make it official.

I have some personal experience with this subject, though I didn't get burnt too much. However, enough to do some research and think about it carefully.

A few points:

1. Registering your marriage in a different country doesn't give you any advantage if you, let's say, move back to your home country in the West. Marriage is marriage no matter where it was registered. Even if you marry a Thai or Colombian girl and stay in that country, then get divorced and leave, theoretically there is a chance she will chase your money abroad, although practically it depends how much money there is to chase, because it's not easy.

2. Off-shore accounts, funds, etc. It's expensive and time consuming. You lose money pretty much on everything: exchange rates, interest rates or returns, cost of opening and keeping the accounts, tax reporting, etc. IMHO, it's not worth it unless you are a millionaire and/or have an international background, e.g. a citizen of Country A and resident of Country B. BTW, if Country A is the US, they will tax you regardless (with the exception of the first 90K/year or so if you live abroad permanently). I don't think it makes any sense to try to hide money offshore just to "divorce proof" you life. If you have little, you'll get screwed on costs/rates, if you have a lot, there are private detectives out there who will help the spouse trace this money if need be.

3. I have a couple of friends who moved to countries like Brazil and Thailand and married local women. They also became residents of these countries, which is convenient, though I believe in Thailand even being married to a Thai doesn't give you the right to work or path to citizenship. Also, these guys were not that rich in the first place, so when one of them divorced later on, he didn't have much to lose (hardly anything). This is the only type of situation where I see myself getting married: to get legal status in a foreign country and not have much to lose if things don't work out.

[Brodiaga]

(06-16-2013 11:52 AM)Kabal Wrote:  

An excellent post from WallStreetOasis

I read the post. This applies to wealthy people, perhaps the types who use private banks, trusts, and family offices. If you are one of them, more power to you. Otherwise, may I repeat myself and suggest an infinitely simpler solution for you: don't get married.

[jimukr104]

Make sure when a divorce is taking place you move your liquid assets to another country. it can be another western country. Really does not matter because foreign banks do not cooperate with local divorce laws of other countries. For example a NYC judge orders you to pay, your money is in Italy. There is NO way to get compliance. As long as it is not tax evasion or child support you are pretty safe. Just make sure you do not commit tax evasion.
Of course a judge can put you in contempt of court so you need to get out of the country. best if out before you get a court summons. if you are NOT replaceable in country ,contempt can't take place.
Funny thing about contempt. Most large cities are 2 busy to look for you. How it worked in the NYPD is if we ran your id and found a bench warrant we would bring you to court. Point is never get stopped by cops and you can technically still avoid being dragged to court.

[OSL]

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Thank you for your detailed post Brodiaga, that was very valuable.

However, the assumption I am trying to raise in this scenario is that marriage IS going to happen and that the man DOES have a lot of assets. If we just didn't get married then the thread could have been "Here's why avoiding marriage will help you avoid all of these horrible potential legal consequences"

Despite our best efforts, it's likely that many of us will fall really hard and end up getting married. I created thread to deal with that scenario.

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[bacon]

The thing is marriage at its core is a business contract. All of these offshore/hiding money in overseas bank accounts is just playing with fire because if you have assests a forensic accountant can find it.

I really dont get why anyone who is not very religious needs marriage. Why can´t two people just live together, have kids etc without getting the state and the church to sign off on your relationship?

[Hades]

I was always curious about one thing with these divorce courts.

Suppose I get married, and after four years a divorce is imminent.
One late night I drive an old pickup truck with a boat attached to the family farm and "handshake trust" it to my father, who buys the boat, trailer, and pickup for 1 dollar. Then I drive a hunting camper over to my brother's house, and "handshake trust" it to him, where he proceeds to buy it on the spot for 1 dollar. A tractor is driven over to my old neighbor's place and the same thing happens.

Can they burn my ass in court then? I'll be damned if "she" gets the boat, but she is entitled to half of the profit - $ 1.50

[samsamsam]

(06-16-2013 10:11 PM)Hades Wrote:  

I was always curious about one thing with these divorce courts.

Suppose I get married, and after four years a divorce is imminent.
One late night I drive an old pickup truck with a boat attached to the family farm and "handshake trust" it to my father, who buys the boat, trailer, and pickup for 1 dollar. Then I drive a hunting camper over to my brother's house, and "handshake trust" it to him, where he proceeds to buy it on the spot for 1 dollar. A tractor is driven over to my old neighbor's place and the same thing happens.

Can they burn my ass in court then? I'll be damned if "she" gets the boat, but she is entitled to half of the profit - $ 1.50

Depends how long in advance you do it, I guess. Fraudulent transfer can be an issue.

[Vacancier Permanent]

Great thread YMG! And amazing post WSO!I'm saving that post of yours for my own hall of fame materials to keep around for years to come!

I guess the main issue at hand for those who will contemplate marriage is to have at the very least, a 2nd passport to protect your ass just in case. and of course, have your business/bank accounts and assets in a male friendly environment such as HKG or the Bahamas. And as the ultimate peace of mind policy, follow those 3 Vital Don'ts and you'll be fine:

- Do NOT get a girl pregnant
- Do NOT get married
- Do NOT bring a girl to the feminazi infested world.

(06-16-2013 10:38 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  

(06-16-2013 10:11 PM)Hades Wrote:  

I was always curious about one thing with these divorce courts.

Suppose I get married, and after four years a divorce is imminent.
One late night I drive an old pickup truck with a boat attached to the family farm and "handshake trust" it to my father, who buys the boat, trailer, and pickup for 1 dollar. Then I drive a hunting camper over to my brother's house, and "handshake trust" it to him, where he proceeds to buy it on the spot for 1 dollar. A tractor is driven over to my old neighbor's place and the same thing happens.

Can they burn my ass in court then? I'll be damned if "she" gets the boat, but she is entitled to half of the profit - $ 1.50

Depends how long in advance you do it, I guess. Fraudulent transfer can be an issue.

For that to work, you'd have to do it way in advance, at least a year or so IMO. If you do it within 2-3 months of divorce, then that'll be asking for it. All in all, thread cautiously guys!!!

[iknowexactly]

Brilliant article on forensic accounting, but it only seems applicable to those with mid 6 figure assets and above.

I'll only have something like 50-100K, and I have to make very, very sure I don't lose that.

Of course I would never advocate doing anything illegal, but wouldn't it be easiest to just put a bunch of gold coins, bought over the years with cash and no receipts, in a safe deposit box in Bahamas or the like, maybe owned in a company name there? I don't want to be wasting $1000s a year maintaining multiple corporate shells as the article describes. It seems like fraud is the simplest route unless Bahamas starts turning over all records to US.

[worldwidetraveler]

(06-17-2013 02:45 AM)iknowexactly Wrote:  

Brilliant article on forensic accounting, but it only seems applicable to those with mid 6 figure assets and above.

I'll only have something like 50-100K, and I have to make very, very sure I don't lose that.

Of course I would never advocate doing anything illegal, but wouldn't it be easiest to just put a bunch of gold coins, bought over the years with cash and no receipts, in a safe deposit box in Bahamas or the like, maybe owned in a company name there? I don't want to be wasting $1000s a year maintaining multiple corporate shells as the article describes. It seems like fraud is the simplest route unless Bahamas starts turning over all records to US.

You should be pretty safe since you already acquired the assets prior to marriage.

[DarkTriad]

(06-16-2013 03:59 PM)Brodiaga Wrote:  

Here is my take on this: just do not get married. Co-habit and have kids if you must, but don't make it official.

I have some personal experience with this subject, though I didn't get burnt too much. However, enough to do some research and think about it carefully.

A few points:

1. Registering your marriage in a different country doesn't give you any advantage if you, let's say, move back to your home country in the West. Marriage is marriage no matter where it was registered. Even if you marry a Thai or Colombian girl and stay in that country, then get divorced and leave, theoretically there is a chance she will chase your money abroad, although practically it depends how much money there is to chase, because it's not easy.

2. Off-shore accounts, funds, etc. It's expensive and time consuming. You lose money pretty much on everything: exchange rates, interest rates or returns, cost of opening and keeping the accounts, tax reporting, etc. IMHO, it's not worth it unless you are a millionaire and/or have an international background, e.g. a citizen of Country A and resident of Country B. BTW, if Country A is the US, they will tax you regardless (with the exception of the first 90K/year or so if you live abroad permanently). I don't think it makes any sense to try to hide money offshore just to "divorce proof" you life. If you have little, you'll get screwed on costs/rates, if you have a lot, there are private detectives out there who will help the spouse trace this money if need be.

3. I have a couple of friends who moved to countries like Brazil and Thailand and married local women. They also became residents of these countries, which is convenient, though I believe in Thailand even being married to a Thai doesn't give you the right to work or path to citizenship. Also, these guys were not that rich in the first place, so when one of them divorced later on, he didn't have much to lose (hardly anything). This is the only type of situation where I see myself getting married: to get legal status in a foreign country and not have much to lose if things don't work out.

"Not much to lose" is a terrible mindset to go into this stuff with. Guys with little wealth are the most vulnerable in Family Court.

Losing half your wealth often still leaves you pretty wealthy - say a 5% real world crimp in your actual lifestyle. You lose a beach house and one of your luxury vehicles. If you're a regular working guy that just got assessed $500 a week in support, after being driven into massive debt to pay your lawyer, this a first rate disaster. You're going to taking the bus and working two jobs for the privilege of living in grinding poverty.

[Bad Hussar]

For high net worth people family trusts with your children as beneficiaries can help. Keeps some of the money away from the wifes grubby paws. And , you know, blood is thicker than water.

As for whether marrying in another jurisdiction can protect you. I don't know about that. But I do remember years back when Princes Diana's brother divorced his wife. They had married in the UK, but were living in Cape Town at the time of their divorce, and the court used in the divorce was a South African one. The commentators at the time were saying that this saved him big time and he ended up paying only a fraction of what a UK court was likely to have ordered. I mean if you are American, but are living in Brazil, can your wife "sue you for divorce" (or whatever the terms are) in an American court? Even if she can, what can she go after if most of your assets are in Brazil, or elsewhere outside the US?

[inostranec]

I was married to a Russian. When the divorce happened I did not pay any penny. I know a guy here he had 2 kids and he paid for them 100$ every month. The guy is an average pig faced drunk Russian without education and job and I donnow how he found himself a very rich wife which is 12-15 years younger than him. But that's another story. I think Russia is relatively a better place to get married. Anyway still if you get married you are dumb. Getting a girl pregnant is dumber.

[Anaguma]

WallStreetOasis' idea is probably not practical to a lot of people, especially since it is rather difficult to open a foreign account.
I have given a lot of thought to this question, and here is an idea that I have been toying with, but I don't know how well this will work in reality.

Nevada offers self-directed spendthrift trusts which, if properly drafted in advance, are immune to all creditors, including alimony and child support. You have to be domiciled in Nevada, and most other states will not recognize a Nevada self-directed spendthrift trust.

So basically:
1) Before marriage, move to Nevada, transfer all assets into a Nevada spendthrift trust, have a trusted relative be the executor of the trust.
2) Work for cash only/negligable wages from then on or don't work at all; have the executor invest the assets in the trust to make them grow, and pay out for expenses related only to you as needed. Keep records of everything to demonstrate that the trust is not fraudulent.
3) Never visit a state that does not recognize a Nevada spendthrift trust, in case if your wife blindsides you with a divorce demand in that state and the family law judge jails you in contempt for failure to pay from assets received from the spendthrift trust.

If you get divorced in Nevada, it is very likely that the trust will be accepted as legit, and alimony/child support should be nil or negligable. The downside is that you have be domiciled in Nevada, you probably need assets or income producing investments of sufficient value to support what will essentially be retirement in Nevada + minimum wage or low wage job, and you never go to a state that doesn't recognize the spendthrift trust in case if a family law judge there says fuck you to your trust and jails you in contempt for failure to pay.

[jimukr104]

(06-16-2013 09:58 PM)bacon Wrote:  

The thing is marriage at its core is a business contract. All of these offshore/hiding money in overseas bank accounts is just playing with fire because if you have assests a forensic accountant can find it.

I really dont get why anyone who is not very religious needs marriage. Why can´t two people just live together, have kids etc without getting the state and the church to sign off on your relationship?

NEVER said hide it. It does NOT matter if spouse knows where it is. American civil court system cant freeze overseas accounts .Foreign banks DO NOT follow civil court judgments from another country.Only time they might is if it involves child support because that is Criminalized and the foreign gov't might get involved.That being said to avoid being thrown into jail for contempt , you Need to move overseas . However, going to Another large city(ex.NYC, Philly, etc) is often suffice. Reason is a bench warrant is issued and the only way to get caught most of the time is the have cops run your ID. Car stops are dangerous. But if you live in a large city where you walk or use public transport and NEVER get pulled over you can go most o f your life without getting caught. Most large dept have a warrant squad that is busy going after REAL criminals NOT civil court violators.

the state of residency is what matters .if you move back t oThailiand for example...and give up your state residency than only Thailand law matters. As I SAID one countries divorce decree is not enforceable with assets in another country.

That being said its not to hard to open an accout in certain countries. They made it harder in Switzerland for American because of the excess paperwork . But if you have 1 million they will let Americans open an account. i heard Belgian is easy to open accout for Foreigners.You ofcourse have Singapore and HK.

[Brodiaga]

(06-17-2013 01:23 PM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

For high net worth people family trusts with your children as beneficiaries can help. Keeps some of the money away from the wifes grubby paws. And , you know, blood is thicker than water.

As for whether marrying in another jurisdiction can protect you. I don't know about that. But I do remember years back when Princes Diana's brother divorced his wife. They had married in the UK, but were living in Cape Town at the time of their divorce, and the court used in the divorce was a South African one. The commentators at the time were saying that this saved him big time and he ended up paying only a fraction of what a UK court was likely to have ordered. I mean if you are American, but are living in Brazil, can your wife "sue you for divorce" (or whatever the terms are) in an American court? Even if she can, what can she go after if most of your assets are in Brazil, or elsewhere outside the US?

There is a legal term for that, forgot the exact one... something like divorce jurisdiction fight. If husband and wife can divorce in more than one country, e.g British citizens living in South Africa, it's probably in wife's best interests to file for divorce in the UK before the husband files in SA. These fights are very costly and only make sense if there is enough money at stake.

[tomtud]

Tennis legend Boris Becker had divorce petitions in Florida and in Germany. Him and his ex wife had a Vacation home in Florida yet she filed in Florida where divorce law is more favourable for women than in Germany.

As for divorce proofing your life, I can only say have many things/ properties not in your name but parents etc.

[JWAP]

I'm a noob to all of this. Is there an simple solution to this mess?
- I'm not seeing the word prenuptial thrown around anywhere, does that count for anything?

- Would simply cohabitating and not signing any official documents really protect you? Would a common-law marriage situation fuck you over worse or less?

- Say I got soft and actually wanted kids. What are things I could establish to protect me (and the kids) if the girl turned bitch?

[samsamsam]

(06-18-2013 10:56 AM)JWAP Wrote:  

I'm a noob to all of this. Is there an simple solution to this mess?
- I'm not seeing the word prenuptial thrown around anywhere, does that count for anything?

- Would simply cohabitating and not signing any official documents really protect you? Would a common-law marriage situation fuck you over worse or less?

- Say I got soft and actually wanted kids. What are things I could establish to protect me (and the kids) if the girl turned bitch?

Prenups have issues. Duress/coercion can throw out a pre-nup. Many people do a post nup as well as a pre-nup. Plenty of stories about pre-nups not working out.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/prenu...SZ48VX1yGJ