Dissipation of Assets In Divorce.

Sometimes when a marriage is breaking down one of the spouses will be careless with the property acquired during the marriage.  Classic examples include the husband giving away their investments to members of his family, or the wife footing the bill for an exotic vacation with her new lover.  There are also less fragrant examples, such as the spouse occupying the home failing to keep up mortgage payments after the couple has separated and he or she suddenly finds it harder to pay the bills when they are now maintaining two households rather than one.

In divorce law this is known as dissipation of property, and when it occurs the divorce lawyer of the injured spouse will try to make his or her client whole through the final judgment.  If a court finds that one spouse has dissipated assets it can order a division of the marital property that will subtract the amount that the wrong doing spouse dissipated from his or her share of the settlement.

As one can imagine disputes over dissipation can become nasty.  A spouse who has acted out of animosity in wasting the assets is not likely to readily agree to reimburse his spouse for the losses.  Also dissipation is one of the accusations a party looking for a fight is likely to make against his or her spouse with a very weak factual basis.