Are There Legal Ways To Protect Your Assets From A Divorcing Spouse?

The single biggest way in which you can protect your assets from your wife is to make sure that she signs a prenuptial (premarital) agreement before you marry her. A prenuptial agreement provides much flexibility in deciding how assets and debts will be divided during a divorce. Most importantly, you can eliminate or greatly reduce what some call “legal theft” or “financial slavery,” otherwise known as alimony or spousal maintenance. But if it is too late for that, you could try to get her to sign a postnuptial agreement. Postnuptial agreements are permitted in Arizona. But you must proceed very carefully because this is a tricky area of the law.

Whether you are planning to have your wife sign a prenuptial agreement or a postnuptial agreement, you will need the guidance and advice of an experienced Arizona prenuptial agreement attorney or Arizona postnuptial agreement attorney. If neither an Arizona prenuptial agreement nor a postnuptial agreement are viable options in your situation, the only other thing you can try is to delay the divorce itself. If you delay the divorce filing, you may be able to prepare for a divorce by taking certain steps to reduce your exposure in a future divorce.

This is a very complicated and risky area of the law, and you should never take such steps unless you meet with an attorney who can help you plan for an eventual divorce. At our office, we offer a divorce planning service. This inexpensive service can save you perhaps tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on asset division, spousal maintenance and child support payments. There are legal ways to protect yourself if you have the time to do it and you know how to do it without running afoul of the law.

Impact Of Marital Infidelity On A Divorce Proceeding

If you cheated on your wife, you will not suffer an adverse consequence in your divorce case unless your children were exposed to the cheating. For example, if you foolishly slept with many women and introduced many of them to your children, a judge could find that behavior to be harmful to the children and give you less parenting time or fewer rights as a result of your carelessness. But if you were discreet about it, the judge will not care and will not punish you with regard to how assets and debts are divided. However, if you spent much money on your mistress and your wife can prove that you did so, your wife may have a claim to half the funds expended on your mistresses.

Also, it is possible that a judge could feel sympathetic to your spouse and subconsciously rule in her favor in areas where the judge could decide the matters either way. So it is important to have an experienced and effective Arizona divorce attorney on your side in order to anticipate and swiftly deal with your wife or your wife’s attorney’s attempts to creatively “mention” the affairs in an effort to affect the judge emotionally. Some judges, particularly those that are very religious, may have a hard time keeping their emotions from affecting how they rule if they could easily justify with evidence a ruling in either direction. Most judges are very good at being unbiased in such matters but you do not want to take chances. Having an attorney who knows how to proactively shut down sneaky attempts to use the marital affairs as a weapon against you is invaluable.

For more information on Protecting Assets Legally, a free initial consultation is your next best step. Get the information and legal answers you are seeking by calling (602) 788-1395 today.