You found out that your spouse was having an affair and the two of you immediately filed for divorce. You weren’t exactly shocked because you felt like the marriage had been declining in quality for a while, but you still weren’t exactly pleased.
Things only got worse, however, when you found out how much money your spouse had been spending on their new lover. It turned out that they were giving them a lot of your family’s money or spending it lavishly on dinners and gifts and trips. Is this going to have an impact on your divorce?
This is just one example of the dissipation of assets
The dissipation of assets is essentially when your spouse lowers the total amount of assets that your family controls in some way. They don’t do it by hiding the money, but by spending it. For instance, a business owner could decide to pour all of the family savings into their business, hoping that that will keep some of it from their ex.
If your spouse was spending a lot of money that you had a right to on their affair, that can change the division of property when you get to court. You may be able to argue that that money should never have left your control and that you need a larger portion of the remaining assets to make up for whatever it was that your spouse wasted.
This can become complicated and even contentious because there is no prohibition against spending money in a legal fashion, and your spouse may argue that they weren’t trying to use up the family assets. If you find yourself in this situation, it’s critical to know about all of your legal options.