Recent reports indicate that roughly five percent of people in the United States bought cryptocurrency and still control those assets. While there is not the wild frenzy that there was when prices soared in 2017, people still do buy and sell this digital currency, often as an investment.
The problem, some experts feel, is that it gives people a way to potentially hide those assets from a spouse during a divorce. If someone fails to disclose the assets and their spouse does not know anything about it — either about their own wealth or about cryptocurrency in general — the money could be easily stashed aside. After the divorce, the owner could then cash out their portfolio and quietly cut their spouse out of the division of those assets.
Are you worried that your spouse could do this to you? The key is simply to know what to look for. The currency may be anonymous to a large degree, but there could still be an obvious paper trail.
For instance, in one case, investigators were able to take a look at a person’s bank statements. Since that person had to make the initial cryptocurrency purchase, they saw that transaction where the actual money left the account and went into the digital trading platform.
In that sense, this type of asset hiding is only the sort of thing that can happen if you don’t consider it at all. Understanding that it’s a possibility gives you the tools to track it down. If you do think that your spouse is hiding anything, be sure you know exactly what steps you need to take to sort it all out.