In a divorce, it is essential that you have tabs on all your household finances. You need to know every account and every detail of your finances to get the best settlement when you go through the property division process. For some people, this is simple, but for others, there are potential complications. If your spouse has offshore accounts, it could complicate your divorce.
An offshore account, according to Medium, is any bank account held in another country. While not every offshore account will pose issues, there are some countries that can make things problematic. There are a couple of things that can make offshore accounts an issue in your divorce.
Invisible accounts
If your spouse has an account in Switzerland, then you likely will have a hard time getting any information on it. You may not even be able to verify that it exists. Switzerland has incredible banking secrecy laws. If your spouse deposits enough money, his or her name will not show up on the account, making it tricky to track down.
Lack of reporting
Some countries where your spouse may have an offshore account do not comply with the U.S. rules concerning taxes or reporting the account. If there is no reporting of the account, then there is no paper trail. You may have a difficult time hunting down the account because you will have no mention of it on tax forms or in any other document.
Offshore bank accounts are valuable for hiding money if your spouse does it correctly. He or she would need to open an account in a country that does not cooperate with the U.S. and in a bank that is not available worldwide.
