Financial / Tax info

[ADJUST THESE SENTENCES AS NEEDED BASED ON THE SITUATION: You mentioned that you want to take your husband’s money and leave. Is the money in a joint account that you have access to? Or is it in his own personal bank account or other type of account that you wouldn’t normally have access to?] Although I can’t speak to your state’s specific laws on this, generally when two people are married, money that is earned by one spouse during the marriage could be considered marital property and legally available to either spouse for his/her use. If the spouses are considering divorce or have filed for divorce though, any spending beyond the amount a person needs to support himself/herself might be considered “dissipation of marital assets,” which basically means that the money was intentionally wasted. It is possible that in a divorce proceeding, the spouse who took out the money may be asked by the judge to account for what it was spent on to make sure that it wasn’t “wasted.” In addition, when a judge in a divorce divides up the marital assets, the judge could decide that some of the money that the spouse took “belongs” to the other spouse and can issue an order that requires the spouse who took it to pay back a portion of it. A person who is thinking of taking money out of a joint account may want to keep detailed records of what that money was spent on so that s/he can prove that in court if needed.

In addition, the situation may be different if one spouse has money in his/her own account and does not give the other spouse permission to access it. If the non-account-holder-spouse does something like forge the other spouse’s name on a check or s/he gets someone to impersonate the other spouse in the bank by falsely using the account-holder-spouse’s ID to withdraw money, this could be a crime and may bring negative legal consequences to the non-account-holder-spouse. Before withdrawing money that you don’t already have access to, you may want to talk to a lawyer for advice to make sure that you can legally take that money without consequences. We have links for lawyers on our website, some of which are free or low-cost if you qualify. [HYPERLINK]