BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 459: Divorce Season: How to Protect Your Financial Future During Separation

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

Marriage and money are known for mixing like oil and water, but a little financial knowledge will allow you to navigate these sensitive issues with confidence. Today’s guest is an expert on this front and is here to equip you with some future-saving finance tips! Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money podcast! In this episode, we’re joined by Tracy Coenen, a forensic accountant who specializes in unearthing money shenanigans in marriages. On most days, Tracy works closely with spouses who suspect financial infidelity or that their partner is making financial arrangements in preparation for a divorce. This is a vulnerable position for any partner to be in, but with Tracy in their corner, they can better handle their finances and weather the storm. Whether you’re single, preparing for marriage, or filing for divorce, this episode is loaded with all kinds of personal finance tips that will help you protect your financial future. Tracy shares why it’s critical for all couples to draft up prenuptial agreements before getting married, the biggest warning signs of financial infidelity in a partner, and when you might need to hire a forensic accountant to assist with your marital money problems. Stay tuned until the very end to hear about some of the wildest cases Tracy has worked on over the years! In This Episode We Cover Common marriage and money-related stressors that contribute to divorce When to hire a forensic accountant for your marital money issues The biggest warning signs of financial infidelity or divorce planning Why you and your partner NEED a prenuptial agreement before getting married Keeping legal costs under control during the divorce process How a couple’s finances and assets are typically divided in a divorce And So Much More! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Forums Finance Review Guest Onboarding Join BiggerPockets for FREE Scott's Instagram Mindy on BiggerPockets Grab Scott’s Book, “Set for Life” Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show Podcast Talent Search! Money Moment What Out for These Financial Infidelity “Red Flags” in Your Marriage w/ Tracy Coenen Why You’re (Probably) Wrong About Prenups w/ Aaron Thomas Money and Relationships: How to Have “The Talk” Before It’s Too Late w/ Vivian Tu Getting Financially “Naked” with Your Significant Other w/ Erin Lowry Connect with Tracy and Get $100 Off Your Divorce Money Guide Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-459   Interested in learning more about today's sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email us: [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, listeners, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast where we interview Tracy Conan and talk about divorce season. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my fascinated by money co-host, Scott Trench. Great to be here, Mindy. I'm always, you know, I have a forensic level of interest in financial planning. And today we get into financial crimes, making it even better. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else.

to introduce you to every money story and every money situation, which can include divorce, because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, going to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or learn about the very real challenges, cheating, lying, and fraud that happen in personal finance. We'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of money. the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams. Scott, it's time for the part of our show called The Money Moment, where we share a

money hack, tip, or trick to help you on your financial journey. Today's money moment is beware of ATM fees. Try and find an ATM that is for your bank to avoid fees. Most festival or bar ATMs have fees starting at $3.99 all the way up to $10. For one transaction, that seems ridiculous. If you're going somewhere like a concert, a festival, or a cashier, only establishment, make sure to prepare ahead of time so you don't have to pay needless fees. Do you have a money tip for us?

Email money moment at biggerpockets.com. All right, Scott, we're talking with Tracy Conan today and she is coming back to talk to us about divorce season. Divorce season is from January to March with another peak in August or September, where there is up to 33% increase in divorce filing. 33% seems like an awfully large spike in filings just for that short period of time. And divorce is an unfortunate part of life. But we want our listeners to be prepared in case this scenario happens to them or someone that they love.

Yeah. And I think you'll find Tracy to be an incredible source of knowledge on this topic. So with that, should we bring her in? Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture. including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with

Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware, and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch's subscription with the code Pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets,

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30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Tracy Conan is a forensic accountant and fraud investigator. She's also the author of find me the money and was on episode 439 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Tracy, welcome back to the show. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I am stoked to be back for round two of talking about divorce. Yes. So if our audience didn't hear your first episode with us, and they should go listen to episode 439 because it was an awesome episode. Can you share with us who you are and how you became a forensic accountant? Absolutely. My job is to do fraud investigations. Some of that's on the corporate side where I'm investigating executives who are hiding money or doing other sorts of

money shenanigans. And some of it's on the personal side where I'm doing things like divorce. And my divorce work is mostly for people who are higher net worth and have complicated money situations. But I created the divorce money guide to help the average people going through divorce kind of dig into those numbers themselves because I always say in the average divorce, it's not all that complicated when someone's hiding money. And I got into this because I was criminology major who wanted to become a prison warden. And in the process of studying to become a prison warden, I took a class called Financial Crime Investigation, and that was life-changing. So here I am.

Awesome. In your first episode, your first appearance on The Money Show, we spoke about financial infidelity and what that is. And today we're covering divorce season. Can you tell us what divorce season is? Well, people like to talk about certain times of the year, when divorce filings are much higher than other times of the year. And the most typical divorce seasons that we talk about happen in August and in January. January being the primary one. And the deal is that when families are considering divorce, typically mom and dad want to get through that end of the year holiday season.

Whatever holidays they celebrate, they kind of want to give the kids the last holiday season together. Or sometimes they're thinking maybe let's try and tough it out for one more holiday and see if we can't fix things. Let's maybe do one more family vacation. And when that doesn't work or when they get through the holidays as planned, January is the time when people are filing for divorce. So what are some of the most common reasons people choose to get divorced?

Well, of course, there's stressors that push people towards divorce. You know, of course, there can be a fundamental incompatibility. But if you want to talk about the stressors in a marriage, it is typically issues surrounding the kids or issues surrounding money. Those tend to be the things. And I think money even more so is kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back. There's a lot of problems that we can have and can work through. But when the money starts to fall apart for many people, that's something that they just don't seem to recover from at some point. Diving a little deeper on money as a cause, what are the primary subcategories of money problems, if you will, that are contributing to

is it a difference in values on spending? Is it, hey, our lifestyle is being forced to reduce because of external pressures? What do you typically see? You pretty much hit it, Scott. I think there's two major ones. One being that there ends up being a fundamental incompatibility with the money. And I think that a lot of people know about this incompatibility before they go into marriage. They say, well, he's not as good with money as I am, but I think it's going to be okay. I'll keep an eye on the money and everything will be fine. And then they get into the marriage and see, that their spouse is spending recklessly, not letting them be responsible for the money, things like that.

And that incompatibility can really be a stressor. And the other one, as you mentioned, is some sort of external force. It might be a job loss, you know, a really expensive catastrophe in the family, be that some medical bills or, you know, a home fire that isn't covered by insurance or something like that. Those really expensive things can certainly be one of those stressors that can break the camel back. Without giving names or, you know, sharing explicit detail, well, identifying details. Can you give us any examples of some of the divorces you've worked on that were predicated by money issues

and some things that you have found? The cases that I've worked on where the money issues were really at the forefront of the divorce typically have involved affairs. That's one of the things that I didn't mention in terms of marriage is breaking down, of course. Affairs and money issues are really closely tied. One, because there is a fundamental lack of integrity there with the affair, and that often spills over into lying about money as well. But also affairs are expensive, and the money has to come from somewhere. And so those two things are intertwined so heavily. And so I've worked on countless divorces involving affairs. And my work in those is to really figure out how much has been spent on that affair partner.

Is there a secret account that's been open somewhere that's been used to fund this affair? Is there that secret credit card? Might there be some secret real estate somewhere? I often talk about one of the cases where the wife didn't even know that there was an affair. She just thought they were getting divorced because they were incompatible. You know, she didn't want the marriage to end. but that's just how it was going to be. But she was concerned about some money issues, and I was brought in to look into them.

And it was a payment to a utility company that ultimately ended up uncovering the secret townhouse that he owned and that his girlfriend lived in. So it became an infidelity issue where that wasn't initially the concern. Would you say that infidelity is a primary problem in divorce? and the money issues that are related to them for high net worth divorces. Oh, that's a really great question. I'm not sure that it happens any more often than in the general population. You know, it's disappointing to me how often I see these affairs, but I don't think for wealthy people it's necessarily more prevalent than it is for average people.

So your job is a forensic accountant. and I'm assuming some people are exceptionally sneaky with how they how they've handled certain of these things. So if you're someone listening to this and you have suspicions or whatever around this, like, how do you go about validating them? Can you even have a chance in some cases or do you know, how do you go about, you know, are pursuing your suspicion that this might be happening in your marriage if you feel like your your spouse is not telling the truth? If someone is wealthy, they have all sorts of sneaky ways that they can hide money and they can do things with shell companies and multiple accounts and potentially overseas accounts. And they have a lot of creative things that they can do. And it can get really complicated because I've seen cases where they bounce money from account to account to account. And they do this on purpose to try to confuse things.

When you talk about average people getting divorced, I say, you know, the 90 to 95 percent of us, normal people getting divorced. who aren't wealthy. There are some pretty typical ways that they hide money. And that's why when I created the divorce money guide, I said, you know, you can find the money that's been hidden because I can show you exactly where to look, even if you're not good with numbers. So, for example, super easy. How do you find a secret bank account?

Where would you start to look? People think there's no way I could find that. Well, guess what? Most of the times, if your spouse is opening a secret bank account, they've got to get money into that account somehow. most times they're going to just transfer money straight from your joint account to that secret account because they think you're not looking at the bank statements and you'll never know. It's that simple in many of the cases, believe it or not.

I think that people who are having an affair, maybe in the beginning, they're like, oh, I'm going to get caught. I have to be super sneaky. But after a while, especially if it's been going on for a while, they're like, oh, she's not catching on. He's not catching on. I don't have to be so secretive. I don't have to be so, you know, trying to cover my tracks. But like you said, you found that one utility bill.

People who are cheating aren't thinking clearly. Well, this guy with the utility bill opened a bank account at the same bank that he and his wife had their joint checking account at. And he simply made a mistake. He went to go pay that utility bill and paid it from their joint account instead of from his secret account. And that's how we uncovered it. But they'll do things like use a lot of cash for the affairs.

So start going to the ATM a lot or withdrawing cash from the bank because they think, well, if it's cash, you won't know what I spent it on. True. I won't know what my spouse spent the money on if it's cash. But what I will see is, oh my goodness, my spouse has gone to the cash to the ATM three times a week every week for the last year. That's a problem. So yes, they took a step to cover up what they were doing, but they didn't take all the steps. Let's go back to divorce season. It is coming up in January, the big one. When do people start planning for a divorce? How far in advance would you say? Well, when kids are going back to school

in the fall, I think is when things get real for people. So I mentioned that divorces are a little bit in that August timeframe kind of when family vacations are done. If the divorce filing doesn't happen then, I think there's the serious discussions that are happening in that August, September, October timeframe. And we're making a plan saying, okay, we can stick it out for another few months through the end of the year. So that's a pretty typical time frame for planning. How much greater of a magnitude of divorces are happening in January and August or filings than

other months? Is this like a blip or is it a huge spike? And it's a very disproportionate skew towards those months. It's a noticeable increase, but not a huge, huge spike. I can't give you the exact stats, but it is a certainly a noticeable increase. If someone is planning for a divorce or thinking about a divorce, what financial moves should they be making or should they be looking for their partner to be making that indicate that, they're planning this. Right. There's there's the two different sides of that planning. There's the one where if you're my client, I'm saying you need to plan and protect yourself and do certain things. And then

there's the, what if your spouse is planning and doing something shady? So let's talk about it first from the standpoint of you're my client and I want to help you be prepared. I always tell people to start gathering documents, important documents like passports, birth certificates, marriage certificates, things like that, kind of the facts and figures about yourself. But then also start gathering account statements. I want you to start getting those account statements while you still have access to the accounts while your name is still on them. Because oftentimes when a divorce is filed, someone's name gets taken off an account. Someone gets locked out of an account and it's not as easy to get information. So on the information side, that's what I want you to do. On the money side, I always tell people,

I want you to have access to money that is protected in an account that's only in your name. So your spouse, who is soon to be your ex-spouse, can't shut that account, cannot take that money out of the account. One of the really unfortunate things that I see in divorces is a spouse who is a stay-at-home parent who has no source of income because they haven't been working. They've been raising the kids. And all of a sudden, divorce is filed and the bank account is drained, the one that's they relied on that joint account or their name has taken off. And so having an account in your own name

with money that is then secure is really important. And on the flip side, what are some things that your clients should be looking for that would indicate that their spouse is considering a divorce? The other side is doing it. I like to call it divorce financial planning. And I don't mean that in a good way. I mean it in a sneaky way, of course. Look for them starting to make some money moves that don't make sense. So if you're keeping an eye on your bank account and your credit cards, do you see larger amounts of money moving in a way that doesn't make sense, maybe being transferred out of an account? Sometimes I see things where they're asking you to sign things, potentially not even letting you read them or kind of coercing you to sign things. It might be

related to the house or to a loan or to wills and things like that that make me really uncomfortable. And then I would also look at them potentially playing some games with the taxes, maybe not getting the tax returns filed, maybe pushing to file them really quick without letting you see them. I always say anything out of the ordinary to have to do with the money that gives you kind of that little feeling in the pit of your stomach that just this is unusual or doesn't seem like it always was or doesn't seem quite right. That's what I would be concerned about.

Yeah, I would say don't ignore that niggling feeling in the pit of your stomach that is saying, I think something's wrong. I think it's really important to listen to our intuition. And when you're in a marriage where there is conflict and you are heading towards divorce, it's really easy for your spouse to say you're being paranoid. You don't know what you're talking about. You're looking for problems. And they kind of try to talk you out of your intuition.

and I'd like for people to actually lean into their intuition. If something doesn't seem right, I would rather have you assume that there is this divorce financial planning going on so that you can take steps to help yourself. I understand that there are, you know, premarital agreements, post-marital agreements, state law that determine the financial outcomes of marriages. So when folks are doing this divorce financial planning, are they really getting anywhere or is someone like you going to come in and say, nope, this is how it's going to work out at the end of the day? What percentage of the time are people trying to get away with this sneaky stuff? And what percentage of the time do you think people are getting away or are actually succeeding in getting away with it in some degree? People are getting away with it. And the problem is that we don't have good stats because we don't know for sure when they've been getting away with it.

But they get away with it. And it's worth it for them to try because even if they don't get away with it, at least they tried. So I'm working on a divorce case right now where my client found notes that her husband made about how he was going to move money to try to deprive her of some of it. And he laid out on his notes, his best case and worst case scenario of how he was going to come out of this divorce. He is trying to move this stuff around.

And the truth is, if we find everything that he's, he moved, he's probably not going to get penalized at all for it. He's still only going to have to split it with her. So it's worth it to him to try to hide it and hope she doesn't find it because he isn't going to get penalized. That is the unfortunate part of this all. What percentage of the time, and this is going to be a skewed statistic, of course, but what percentage of the time that you are hired are you finding these types of moves in a divorce setting? Almost always, because by the time someone wants to make that investment to hire someone like me. You know, we're talking 10, 15, $20,000 to get me involved. They're pretty

sure that something bad has happened. They probably have evidence of one or two things that have happened, maybe, you know, some evidence of some payments that were improper or some transfers that were improper. And so the cases that I get involved in almost always have something like this going on. Now, you asked earlier about, you know, in what percentage of cases do you think people are actually hiding money. And my best sense of that is at least 25% of the time, probably about 50% of the time in divorces. How long does a divorce take if you have to step in and you start looking for all of this and find, unfortunately, find some of this stuff? Does that, I'm assuming that just extends the timeline for a long time. Yeah, the cases I work on probably are taking two to three

years to get resolved. Normal divorce cases. If you agree on most things, you can probably have your divorce done in something like three to six months. And believe it or not, there are divorces that are very amicable in that way where, hey, we just decided we no longer belong together as a married couple, but we kind of agree, you get this, I get that, this is what's fair. And they can get it done pretty quickly. If you are arguing about things, I think. I think six months to a year is probably more typical. And if you're going at it like cats and dogs, probably a year to three years would be pretty typical for how long it might take to get divorced.

Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going. And more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal

finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves the needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year.

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that probably assets are locked up. They can't be sold or repositioned or reinvested or anything like that. What's the cost of an average amicable divorce? So one of those divorces where we're agreeing on everything could cost you almost nothing up to maybe two or three thousand dollars. Let's say if you have, you know, you might want to hire an attorney to draft up the agreement. We agree on everything, but we want that legal document drafted by an attorney. Or if you use one of the online, you know, online companies that does do it yourself divorce, that's a single. That's a you know, you can probably do it for a couple, two or three thousand dollars or maybe even less. If you're getting to where it is one of those that we call contested divorces,

where we are arguing about things, we might have to go in front of a judge, something like that. They say the typical cost is $10,000 to $15,000 per person. So you can plan on your divorce costing you, $20,000 to $30,000 if we are going to go and really fight it out. So there's certainly incentive for people to come to agreement. on their own. I'm a huge fan of mediation. You know, you can each have your own lawyers, but then you hire a mediator who kind of is in the middle and is talking with both sides to try to get you to come to agreements on something and do that give and take. That can save you a lot of money. And what happens to assets like the house or rental property or a business or whatever in the

interim if there's a back and forth that could last up to three years? It gets really complicated sometimes because typically one person will stay in the family house. And then the question is, who makes the mortgage payment? Who pays the utilities? This is especially complicated if you have a stay-at-home parent who stays in that house and doesn't have a source of income of their own. The breadwarner of the family has moved out and says, I'm not going to pay rent on my apartment and make the house payment. We can't afford to do both of those things. And yet, both the rent and the house payment need to be made. So it can get complicated. Ultimately, you know, we're going to have to figure out something that works. In this day and age, when it's hard to refinance loans, when interest rates are so high and it's becoming, you know, impossible for some people to refinance their loans, we're seeing people who are getting divorced still living in the same house together and deciding that one person lives upstairs, one person lives downstairs.

And it's horrible. It's horrible for them. it's horrible for the kids because it's hard to get along, but sometimes financially, that's the best option. That is, that's actually, I don't even know how to react to that. That sounds terrible. I know that's stunning. For people who are listening, I wish they could see both of your faces, right? Because it's something that a lot of people don't think about that that can become a reality when you're in divorce. And you also, you mentioned businesses and rental properties and things

like that. All of these assets, when it's time for divorce, we have to come to a decision. is one of us keeping it and then we're probably buying the other one out, or are we going to sell that asset and then split the proceeds from it? I have another question here about how assets are distributed going through a divorce. And if there are any kind of broad rules or state law that that folk that are fairly common across, you know, across the country around, around how, what's your property, what's marital property? How are, how is that marital property split? How does alimony get paid? All those kinds of things. Can you give us a framework for how that's often handled? Or pick one state and say it's handled there if it's truly completely.

It is, it is different state by state. And there are little picky details from state to state that can really impact how that's going to turn out. And so sometimes people when they're in, you know, online divorce support groups or things like that, they'll ask questions about asset division, about alimony. And the response they get back is a little bit frustrating because it's ask your attorney. And the reason for that is really because it can vary so much by state. We have community property states where kind of the general rule is everything is owned by us equally. That's a handful of state. The vast majority of states are equitable distribution states where they kind of look at everything and say, yes, it's marital property, but it's not necessarily

50-50. It's going to be divided in a way that is fair. Now, when I as a forensic accountant am talking about the assets and the money in divorce, I do kind of start with a presumption that we're looking at dividing things 50-50, but then we move that needle one way or the other, depending on the circumstances of your case. So here's a great example. A man and women are married. The woman has been a stay-at-home mom for the last 15 years, doesn't have a source of income of her own.

They have a house with equity. We're going to start with talking about, are we splitting that equity 50-50? That would kind of seem fair. We've been married for a long time. We acquired this house together. We own it together. Let's split the value of it. But if she goes back to work, having been out of the work for her,

for so long, her earnings will probably never catch up to where her husband is earning. She's behind the eight ball with her career, with her peers, with regaining some skills she may have lost. She may have gotten behind in the technology. In that case, we might be saying, hey, she ought to get a larger share of the equity to make up for the fact that she'll never be able to earn as much as him. And she'll probably never be able to save as much for retirement as he can. So that's how I like to look at it. And is that something that, that you make recommendations for as part of your forensic accounting practice is that you say, okay, well, here's their financial situation, but really here's how they should divide it,

or is that something that a mediator would suggest? Well, when I go into cases, my role is primarily to figure out where the money went, to trace that money and say, this money was here, and now it's here. And it went through this series of transactions to get there. And they're, Therefore, this money has been spent on an affair or I've identified this other account that has $50,000 in it, all of those kinds of things. And so that's my role with the court is to be an expert on the facts about the money. But behind the scenes, you touched on one of my favorite parts of cases, which is working with my client on strategy.

So I'll say, if I were you, I would be going for a larger share of the house. And here is the argument that we could use. And so I'll work with the attorney on how we would present an argument like that. What numbers are the most important? And one of the important things to remember is that judges typically aren't numbers experts. And so we want to make an argument that is really easy to understand. Is there a threshold or a minimum that you think your spouse is hiding that triggers a call to a forensic accountant?

When do I need to call a forensic accountant? in a divorce? I don't know that there's necessarily a threshold because even if you thought $10,000 was missing, it might still be worth the phone call to get some direction on where you're going. But I always like to say it's going to cost you at least $10,000 to hire a forensic accountant. So you probably ought to have at least $50,000 to $100,000 that is potentially at stake in the case. Because by the time you pay the forensic accountant, by the time you pay your attorney to argue about whatever is found, you know, you could end up spending more than you could ever possibly recover. So I like thinking about $50,000 to $100,000 of potentially missing money in order to get an

expert involved. But if you don't know where you are on that yet, because people are saying, well, gosh, if I knew how much money was missing, I wouldn't need a forensic accountant. Now, would I? The idea is that I want you to try and do some legwork for yourself to try to get your arms around what could possibly be missing. And that might involve looking at what we've been making every year and comparing that to what went into our bank account and then what went out of the bank account and seeing, does it make sense? Does what's in our account today make sense? Gosh, I thought we had a lot more money. Let's try to ask some questions surrounding that to see if we can get some better idea of how much might be missing. Okay. So I don't even want to say, let's say I'm going through a

divorce. But let's say I'm going through a divorce. I find what appears to be very damning evidence that my spouse is hiding large sums of money. I hire you. You find large sums of money that he has tried to hide. Can I ask the court to make him pay your fee? Because if he hadn't hidden it, I wouldn't have needed to in the first place. Is that like, can you ask for accountant costs or like costs from your? And should I hire you before or after filing for divorce in that situation? Well, we'll do Scott's question first. You can hire me before or after filing for divorce.

It doesn't matter. I always say the sooner I get involved, the better off you are because the longer we wait, the less you get. The longer we wait, the more chance your spouse has to hide more money. that we can never find. So I do like starting earlier rather than later. So back to Mindy's question, can you ask for costs? Yes, you can. We have done this in a number of cases where we've said, it's his shenanigans that were the reason why I had to be hired. So judge, please order him to pay my fees. I will say there is less success on that argument than I would like to see. Judges, yeah,

judges like to say, you know what, you guys got divorced, you were fighting over stuff, you each pay your own costs. A lot of times that's how it works out. The cases where they are more likely to force someone to pay the cost of the other would be a case where one party doesn't have a source of income, but the other one does. That just seems like wrong. I'm so offended for all the people who have asked for costs and not gotten them when it was. the ex-spouses shenanigans that necessitated your hiring in the first place. I mean, that just seems wrong. I'll insult you more. In order to ask for those costs, you have to pay your attorney to draft and file a motion and probably go in front of the court and argue that motion to ask for the cost. So it's going to cost you money to ask to have the other side pay some of your costs. How does a, you know, Mindy and I have talked to.

about the marriage and money many times on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. And we have consistently reinforced get a pre-up. If you don't get a pre-up, you already have a pre-up. It's just the laws of your state that are in there. Have you found prenuptial agreements or post-nuptial agreements to be beneficial to both parties in the cases that you've worked on? And, you know, would you echo the advice? They are super beneficial. What I have seen with older prenups is that they tend to protect one of the parties, typically the person who is moneyed, who has the source of income, or maybe who comes into the marriage with some wealth. What I like, though, in this modern day is really thinking about how the preempt can protect both

people. So someone who makes less money or who is planning on quitting work to become a stay-at-home parent might say, well, I don't need a pre-nup because I don't have money that I'm protecting. So not true. What you're protecting is, hey, I'm going to be giving up my career. Let's outline if I give up my career and I'm out of the workforce and then we do end up divorcing, how am I protected financially? And what will I receive from our marital estate in consideration of the fact that I, you know, put my own career on hold and things like that? So I am with you, Scott and Mindy. pre-nups are the most wonderful thing in the entire world because they are your chance to say, this is how we want our divorce to happen versus how some lawmakers want our divorce to happen.

Yeah. Episode 301 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, we interviewed Aaron Thomas, who is a pre-up attorney. He helps you draft your pre-up. He came on the show, and I've been married for 21 years, almost 22 years. And my husband came to me and said before we got married. And he's like, hey, do you want to talk about a pre-nup? And I said, if you bring that up again, we're not getting married at all. So he never brought it up again. And we didn't really have anything to protect at the time. And, you know, that worked at the time. But now our circumstances are very different. And Aaron, Aaron's episode changed my thinking on pre-ups. He was able to explain how it is. Is it just a plan for our divorce?

It's actually a plan for how you want your marriage to run. And you can literally put anything in your pre-up. So he's got all these ideas and suggestions and examples of things that people have put into his pre-up. If you are getting married or thinking about getting married, listen to episode 301 because it is a really great episode on the concept of the pre-up. Well, it's a contract for how the money. is going to work between us during and after the marriage. And the cool thing is a pre-up is not forever unless you want it to be, right? You sign that pre-up and it continues. It's a contract. It's in force. But if you're married, let's say four years into the marriage, some things have changed with your

circumstances and you think that what you've gotten that pre-up doesn't apply to you anymore, doesn't really work, you can do a post-nup. The same kind of contract, it just is post, after you got married. And you can say in that post-up that our pre-up that we signed is now null and void. And we have this new contract that's going to dictate things. One thing you pointed out earlier is you got to be thinking about protecting both parties in these. And often when, you know, there's a pre-up involved, it probably is because either one or maybe both, but likely one party has a lot of money and the other may not in some of those situations.

And so I think you'd probably agree with this. but both sides need to have representation that they trust going into that pre-nub that is separate, right? It's not one counsel advising both of you. I don't know if any place that a pre-up is valid if you didn't have your own attorneys. I think every state requires that you have your own attorney representing you for that pre-up. Okay. Let's let's let's, I have one final question here. Can you share the craziest or wildest, you know, financial, uh, mystery.

that you've unraveled or crazy case that you've worked on and the circumstances of it, perhaps a lesson that comes out of that. Well, I've got two really interesting cases. One was a billionaire that I worked on for his divorce. I was representing his side and his wife wanted a million dollars a month of child support. They had a pre-up. Under the pre-nup, she was going to be fabulously wealthy by any stretch of imagination. She wanted more. She wanted a million dollars a month of child support. And so that one was

crazy because I went through all of their spending for the five years prior to the divorce filing. I looked at everything they spent, categorized it all. And I was in a position. What I was trying to do is figure out what does the lifestyle of the children cost. And so it got really interesting because you're looking at, okay, so give me a list of all of the private jet flights that the kids were on. And how much of the cost of each of those flights should we allocate to the kids because they're on there with mom and dad? And so some really interesting concepts there. So that was one that not crazy, but just interesting to see how does a billionaire live? And we ended up with only $500,000 a month.

It was not $500,000 a month. It was not. And the terrible thing is I'm not allowed to say what the number was because of confidentiality reasons. But a million dollars a month, I could, you know, probably. squeeze by on that. Oh, and it was great. And this, I can talk about this part of it because it was made public in the press because my client was a very private individual and his wife knew that. And so part of the way she tried to get leverage over him and the divorce was by leaking things to the media that were private about him and about their divorce because she thought that he would settle the

divorce in order to stop that from happening. But, you know, she needed a million dollars a month because she needed a certain allocation money for a wardrobe because you certainly couldn't go to PTA meeting in the same outfit you wore to another school event a month prior. You must always have a new outfit, right? We talk a lot about the four levers of finance here at bigger pockets with, you know, you can spend less, earn more, invest, or create. But I think we've just learned about a fifth avenue here to pass your income. Mary and divorce a billionaire. Hey, it might be fun to try. What was the other story you were going to share with us? The other story was an interesting one where my client, the wife, was bringing me into the case to investigate the money.

She didn't necessarily know if her husband was doing anything inappropriate, except she did know that after they separated, he got a young, beautiful, former model girlfriend that he seemed to be spending a lot of money on. And the way that it worked in their case under the state laws that they were under, any money that he was spending, while they were separated and before they were divorced was marital money. So it was part hers. And she was worried that he was spending really large amounts of money on this girlfriend. So I was going through the finances and there was a credit card that was primarily used. And it really seemed like there were a lot of expenses on this credit card for the girlfriend. He denied that the girlfriend had a card in her name. The credit card company said, no, the girlfriend doesn't have, there's no one else's name on this account, no authorized user,

or anything like that. And I said, you know, I'm pretty certain that she's going shopping with his credit card, but I don't know how to prove it until we found the Instagram account where she would go and take selfies when she was shopping at high-end stores, selfies when she was at a fancy restaurant the same day that she was shopping, you know, pictures of herself with her fancy meals and her MES bags and all the things. And so I started cross-referencing Instagram posts with credit card charges. And when all of a sudden done, $400,000 was spent on this girlfriend.

Well, I hope this guy paid not only for all of those things, but also for your fees in this particular situation. Was that the case? I don't know how that one worked out on the fees. They had a settlement. And I, you know, it's interesting because I am not always privy to exactly what the settlement ends up being. Sometimes they consider it confidential and they won't even tell their expert what they settled for. So those are fun cases, right? But if you had to speculate in that case, this guy would...

In that case, I think that she ended up getting what she was entitled to, let's say that. Coming into today's show, I would have thought, hey, yeah, of course we know money is a major cause of divorce in this country. But what I think, you know, has been a big reframing of it in my mind from this conversation is that money problems are a symptom of infidelity. in at least a lot of the cases that you're citing that you work on, what do you think? Are the money issues a symptom of an infidelity problem in more cases than not? Or are they the root cause of the arguments that ultimately lead to divorce in many cases? I think they can really be both. And what's interesting when you're talking about being a symptom of infidelity, they're also a symptom of other things.

So how your spouse treats you in regard to money is often how they treat you in regard to a lot of other things in life. Like I will see sometimes a spouse really financially abusing their partner. And it probably also goes hand in hand with disrespect in general in the marriage and things like that. So is it a symptom of other problems? Yes. Can it be the problem itself? Yes. So complicated. So many possibilities here. Okay. Now I got to ask one more follow. What is financially abusing a spouse look like? What does that mean? It's controlling your spouse with money. And it might be lying to them about money. It might be restricting their spending or their access to money. It might be hiding money from them. You know, being shady with the money in a way that is intended to deprive your spouse of the ability to have money, have access to money. etc. Well, this has been really, really fascinating, tough subject. Thank you for so much for joining us

today to lend your expertise in your deep experience in dealing with these types of forensic accounting challenges that come along with a lot of divorces here. Really appreciate it, learned a lot from you and hope to talk to you again soon, Tracy. Well, thank you so much for having me. I know divorce is not a fun topic, but I hope that by talking about it more, we can remove some shame from it, especially shame surrounding the money, and just give people more informed so that they can get a fair outcome in their divorces. Awesome. Absolutely.

Tracy, if people were looking to find you online, where would they look? They can look for my website, fraudcoach.com, because I am your fraud coach during your divorce. And I have a page just for your listeners. They can go to fraudcoach.com forward slash pockets. And they'll find a number of the things that we talked about today on that page. Well, thank you so much for setting that up for our listeners. I appreciate that, Tracy. and I appreciate your time today.

It's always good to talk to you. It's always good to talk to you. Thanks for having me, Scott and Mindy. Thank you, Tracy. We'll talk to you soon. All right, Scott. Holy cow, those cases Tracy shared with us are wild. What did you think of the show?

I think Tracy is just absolutely phenomenal at what she does. What an obvious subject matter expert, probably, you know, no doubt listening to her that she's among the best in the world at what she does. And what a tough line of work. We also talked after the show for a moment about some of the other stuff that she does. And she has a lot of experience in, you know, financial crimes cases as well for, you know, criminal in the criminal space. And so we'd love to kind of pose a question to folks listening. If you're interested, you know, leave us a note on, on the YouTube channel in the comments or in our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash BP money about whether you'd like us to explore financial

crimes and a little bit more detail in the the situations that investors or fraudsters have gotten themselves into. And maybe we can invite Tracy to come back and speculate on them or even provide insight on an anonymized basis, of course, without breaking confidentiality, confidentiality on cases she's worked on. Yeah, I think that would be fascinating to hear from the, not only just what she has found, but that'll give you insight into what to look out for when you are dealing with investments and something pops up and you're like, hmm, that doesn't sound right. Listening to what Tracy has to say about things she has found in criminal cases or, you know,

things that she knows about in criminal cases, I think would be really helpful. I love information and data and you can never have too much of it. Working title for this mini series would be bigger fraud. All right, Mindy, should we get out of here? We should. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench, and I am Mindy Jensen, showing you out, Rainbow Trout. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you're looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at YouTube.com slash Bigger Pockets Money.

Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaelin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Wynette. Trow. Lastly, a big thank you to the bigger pockets team for making this show possible.