Why it does not pay to hide money in divorces

When it comes to the game of hiding money, some warring spouses drag in their parents, children and friends as accomplices to get a bigger slice of the matrimonial assets.

- Tan Ooi Boon

These third parties often claim they are owed money or have stakes in the assets, so once they are "repaid", the opposing spouse will get a smaller share of the spoils. But they forget that judges who preside over such hearings are experts in seeing through flimsy excuses that are unsupported by evidence.

Moreover, if such claims are true, the relatives and friends would have undertaken certain actions, when extending loans to the couple, that should be reflected in bank records.

Crafty attempts to divert matrimonial assets are usually doomed to fail, as these three cases show.

DAD WANTS HIS MONEY BACK

A couple's divorce was well under way when the husband's father jumped into the fray by claiming that around $700,000 of the couple's assets belonged to him.

The son's ex-wife disputed these claims, noting that before the divorce, her husband had never mentioned that he was holding any assets on his father's behalf. The son had been treating two properties and money in his bank account as his own.