10 ms·

> In any given year, trillions of dollars sit safely in the offshore financial world, effectively stateless, protected by legions of well-compensated defenders

• johansch 10y ago
  A prenuptial agreement would probably be easier? And cheaper...
  • ChuckMcM 10y ago
    Agree with the prenup. That is the simplest way to establish what will happen when you divorce. If you remain part of the 99% then it will likely be uncontested, if you hit the lottery and become super wealthy there is a chance your soon-to-be-ex-spouse would try to invalidate it.
    • phpnode 10y ago
      when
      • johansch 10y ago
        Nice catch.
• koliber 10y ago
  Would a prenuptial agreement help?
• jgh 10y ago
  I think that hiding money in a divorce is illegal and you made this post with what is presumably your real name. But maybe money you squirreled away before getting married is different, i dunno. IANAL.
• jbronn 10y ago
  Put into any bank or brokerage account in your name only now. Don't commingle with community funds when you get married. Separate property remains separate -- it's what you acquire and earn during the marriage that's considered community property. If still worried, get a pre-nuptial agreement before taking the plunge.
  • mistermann 10y ago
    To those young-uns worried that asking for a pre-nup might upset your potential future wife: it's much better to see what kind of personality she has in a controversial situation now rather than 2, 5, 10 years down the road. Sometimes it is only under stress where a person reveals their true personality, and believe me you are going to encounter stress during marriage.
    • HarryHirsch 10y ago
      Not only that, the terms you propose in the pre-nup give your potential wife a very good indication how you value the effort of child-raising and her career that she will give up for you (it's still usually the wife that follows her husband). Then she can also make an informed choice.
      • vsipuli 10y ago
        Spot on.
      • shostack 10y ago
        "a very good indication how you value the effort of child-raising and her career that she will give up for you (it's still usually the wife that follows her husband)" Is that still the trend these days? Are most couples able to afford to only have a single working parent anymore?
        • varjag 10y ago
          Cases where wife follows her husband in job-related relocation are more common than the opposite, and they are typically detrimental to the partner's career.
• douche 10y ago
  Stick it in a metal box, and bury it in a big hayfield up near Buxton, under a rock that has no earthly business in a Maine hayfield. Piece of black, volcanic glass.
• manarth 10y ago
  that I will be middle-aged, penniless Is there any reason to believe a divorce settlement would not divide your assets reasonably equally/fairly?
  • linkregister 10y ago
    He is probably including alimony into his reasoning. I think it's still over-the-top.
  • mistermann 10y ago
    Numerous anecdotal horror stories I have heard from several friends in real life, as well as stories in the newspaper/internet.
    • ryandrake 10y ago
      Yup, I know a number of people who will never be able to save for retirement because their paychecks finance their ex-wives' (now carefree) lifestyles. Pretty scary.
  • sean_patel 10y ago
    > Is there any reason to believe a divorce settlement would not divide your assets reasonably equally/fairly? In an ideal world, no. But a co-worker of mine -- Indian guy from India like my Dad was -- with 2 kids got divorced, and his all American white wife (born and raised in Florida) essentially took him to the cleaners. I don't know the details, but apparently she "worked" the system by "getting fired" from her day job months before the divorce was initiated, and now he has to pay child-support and alimony and 1/2 their house (on which he's the only one paying the mortgage) while she is "rediscovering" herself with yoga, hiking and other trips paid for by my co-worker's alimony. He is 44 years old and in a state of panic. I think the only thing common between me and him is that we share the same ethnic origin. Maybe I am over-thinking this, or maybe not. LOL.
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      "Taken to the cleaners": Child support for 2 kids and 1/2 the house. Oh come on! You have to take care of your kids! And, like it or not, 1/2 that house is yours and you should help pay. Sell it if you need to get out from under the debt, but it's still 1/2 yours to deal with. Alimony. Ok, maybe he could have gotten out of this. All in all, this is HARDLY getting taken to the cleaners. This is pretty much to be expected (especially the Child Support!).
• revelation 10y ago
  This is what you took away from this story? That you want to conceal money best as possible in a byzantine labyrinth of tax optimization? It would seem that the protagonist here would still be obscenely rich if he had simply settled with his wife.
  • mixmastamyk 10y ago
    And saved a lot of time and money.
  • klenwell 10y ago
    > In 1999, the Florida attorney general sued to shut down Credit Key Express, saying that it misled customers into thinking they would receive preapproved credit cards. (In fact, all they got for their money was a list of banks that might give them credit cards.) Some years after Credit Key Express shut down, the Florida attorney general came after Xacti’s club businesses, claiming that Oesterlund’s companies had again misled customers. According to court filings, they had abused what are known as “negative options”: Customers would provide their credit card number for a “trial offer,” only to be charged a monthly fee, disclosed in the fine print and difficult to cancel. > Oesterlund had begun exploring how to structure his business to insulate himself not just from taxes but also from future civil litigation. “I want to have in writing a statement,” he wrote to his lawyers in 2011, “that I can no longer be subject to Florida or U.S. law.” Take every step necessary, he added, to “remove myself from the country of Evil.” > “Women get 10 percent in Russia by law,” Oesterlund wrote back. “In Dubai they get 0 percent.” > Oesterlund had stopped making mortgage payments on the house in Boca Raton, she later said in court filings, and threatened to evict her mother and disabled aunt from a house they had bought in Wales. He warned Pursglove that he wouldn’t pay any bills until she agreed to a settlement. Top HN comment: How can I be this guy?
• linkregister 10y ago
  This is premature optimization. The California divorce regime is "community property", that is anything not covered under a prenuptial agreement is divided 50/50. A visit to a men's rights website will unearth horror stories of abusive alimony decrees but these anecdotes are unrepresentative outliers. A prenuptial agreement would safeguard you more than attempting to hide money overseas. Another safeguard would be to marry a person who wouldn't be eligible for alimony due to preexisting income. I consider this sort of optimization to be an inaccurate threat model, focused on outliers rather than the expected case. The expected case in California or any other state would be that the marriage would survive if not flourish (the most common case for upper-middle-class marriages), with a contingency that a divorce would occur amicably (the second-most common case). Screening for contentious attitudes is part of the due diligence of dating. (only on HN would I ever expect to post something like this instead of the common-sense "find the right spouse and work on your marriage and you won't have to worry about this issue")
  • ng12 10y ago
    > find the right spouse and work on your marriage Why buy car insurance? Just find the right car and work on your driving.
    • HarryHirsch 10y ago
      Wait a minute. Liability insurance is not for you, it's for all the other road users. The rest of the world won't put up with you being uncollectible when you cause damage with your vehicle, yet meanwhile reaping all the benefits.
      • sk5t 10y ago
        When you buy comprehensive insurance (or any other-than-liability) it is for your benefit, and sometimes also for your lender's.
      • mysterypie 10y ago
        The grandparent's analogy is perfectly apt. There are two reasons to get liability insurance for your car: To protect yourself and to protect society. Suppose liability insurance was entirely voluntary and not required by law. Would you get it? I'll bet you that most people with good income or significant assets would still buy it, just like people buy home or fire insurance even when not mandatory.
• sporkenfang 10y ago
  Marry someone who isn't dependent on your income and doesn't want to be. Get a prenup so it stays that way. End of story.
  • blowski 10y ago
    And they say romance is dead!
    • erikpukinskis 10y ago
      A relationship that's based on things other than money is unromantic? Is "you get half my assets" really the height of romance?
      • blowski 10y ago
        My vision of romance is more like "I love you for who you are, so I give you everything I am, and everything I have, until death do us part". Corny and old-fashioned, but that's me.
        • xenihn 10y ago
          http://reddit.com/r/bpdlovedones http://reddit.com/r/bpdlovedones And before you say "well you can always see the signs"...sadly, no, some people are really good at hiding it.
          • blowski 10y ago
            Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean.
            • deleted 10y ago
              [deleted]
        • gertef 10y ago
          Old-fashioned romance is a financial agreement. "marrying for love" is a modern innovation, not necessarily a good one.
• h4nkoslo 10y ago
  $50K in $100 bills fits in a safety deposit box. Precious metals are even more compact.
  • kilroy123 10y ago
    The problem is, this money is losing value every year. I think he wants to put money away and still earn _some_ interest to combat inflation.
  • digler999 10y ago
    I'm sure those are registered in an asset seizure or discovery phase of a lawsuit. Sure nobody knows what's inside, but the bank owns the vault so there's got to be a discoverable record of it. Now, a fire-resistant keep-at-home box might be undetectable if you concealed it well enough.
• naner 10y ago
  While the laws may be awful in California and you should always seek to make reasonable and prudent financial decisions... if you have a spouse in mind and this is still weighing on you then you're probably not ready to get married. Also if you have a ton of money go talk to a financial adviser or do some more research, there's many ways to protect your finances from a number of scenarios that don't involve skirting the law. You'd likely have to disclose offshore accounts in the scenario you're imagining so you'd either have to lie -- which is illegal -- or it would all be wasted effort.
• JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  If this is truly a concern of yours, I would suggest not marrying.
  • mysterypie 10y ago
    Or living together. Thanks to government, in most Western countries (including the U.S.) even living together binds you to the same or almost the same contract as marrying.
    • Meegul 10y ago
      I've never heard of this. Someone can actually be entitled to half of your wealth just for living with you...?
      • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
        If you live together long enough. Common Law marriage or something...
        • ianburrell 10y ago
          Common law marriage is only a thing in eleven states. It requires the couple to present themselves as married. Australia and Canada have common-law relationships that aren't marriage but do involve dividing property in courts.
    • alexmat 10y ago
      How does this work with same sex roommates in states that allow same sex marriage? Or even simpler, what if a male and female live together as roommates?
    • sean_patel 10y ago
      > in most Western countries (including the U.S.) even living together binds you to the same or almost the same contract as marrying. Correct. This is such a terrible thing. I'm coming up on 6th year of living with my girlfriend and I am told that California is also something like this... i.e. if you are living together for 7 or more years (maybe 10, not sure) that it's as if you are married. Terrible!
• sammydavis 10y ago
  Also note retirement accounts are subject to being split for divorce, but they are protected from lawsuit. So loading up your 401k will prevent you being sued and having your assets taken.
• kilroy123 10y ago
  The options are: - cash and or jewelry in a safety deposit box (will lose money every year due to inflation!) - bitcoin or some kind of untraceable digital currency (risky!) - buy hard assets over time that don't depreciate in value (fine art, collectible coins, etc.) - transfer assets to someone you really trust - life insurance policy that you pay into over time Back in the day you could have bought bearer bonds and stash them away in a safety deposit box.
• influx 10y ago
  Watch this for an interesting perspective on Divorce in Canada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaC-2lj6HNg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaC-2lj6HNg
• ryuker16 10y ago
  >and will have to start over in my only known career (software development) that is brutally ageist. freelance consulting pays better and nobody gives a rats ass what you look like.
• d_e_solomon 10y ago
  Generally if you're ready for marriage, the question you should be asking yourself is in the event of death, sickness, and yes divorce, how do I ensure the well being of my spouse and kids? If you're asking how do I protect myself in the event of divorce, you yourself are not ready for marriage.
• pipio21 10y ago
  Stop caring about nonsense stuff. If I were you I will go to an extremely inconvenient experience with my girlfriend, like for example crossing the Atlantic on a small rented yacht or camping for a serious amount of time without the comforts of civilization. I have done this myself and it is extremely useful. Your priority should be to know the other person as fast as possible, her priorities in life, her deep beliefs(and she doing the same with you). Not what she says about herself but how she is, how she behaves. With hard experiences it becomes orders of magnitude faster than in normal life, in which acting-faking-posing is possible. This way you will marry the right person. Even if the relationship breaks you don't need to be enemies. I had a lot of girlfriends in my life and most of them continue being part of me. If they need help I will help them without a doubt, but most of the time they are the ones that help me. You are seeing a relationship as a liability, but a great relationship is a big asset by itself. It provides much more than the sum of the parts. By being extremely afraid, you are not living your life in the important stuff, and you are not risking anything, so you are already losing.
  • antisthenes 10y ago
    Congratulations, but not everyone is as great with women as you are.
  • enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>If I were you I will go to an extremely inconvenient experience with my girlfriend, like for example crossing the Atlantic on a small rented yacht or camping for a serious amount of time without the comforts of civilization. I have done this myself and it is extremely useful. Unless you plan to spend your entire married life on a small rented yacht, it's a silly idea to use it as a "trial run" for marriage. I've seen similar practices backfire many times. What happens is that the adversity of the adventure brings the couple together and helps them bond, but when they return to their regular lives they grow resentful of each other because they no longer have the Adventure Stuff to distract them from their actual issues.
    • 1337biz 10y ago
      I think the idea is not to do something adventures but something monotone and boring.
• rabboRubble 10y ago
  1 - Get an attorney and arrange a pre-nup and all these issues go away. 2 - If your masculinity can stand it, find a bright intelligent high earning woman for a partner. Who knows, she might owe YOU support in a divorce! 3 - Foreign bank accounts have tax implications, like FACTA reporting compliance during tax reporting. Your tax preparation bills will go up... unless you plan on keeping these accounts secret from the government? Then hey, here's a felony tax evasion charge for you! Say Hi to Wesley Snipes for me. ...PS... 4 - You may wish to think about a vasectomy before marriage. In many cases, the woman has physical custody of the children so the husband has to pay her support for rearing his kids. This is why the law appears to favor women. In truth the law favors kids not being financially abandoned by their fathers. Anyway, you can prevent having to pay for children by not having any. A vasectomy is the best solution for remaining financially sound.
• SeoxyS 10y ago
  How about not marrying? You could live a life as a committed couple including merged finances, co-living, even having kids. But without an actual marriage, you would never be at risk of losing in a divorce. The only benefit to get married, legally and practically speaking, is perhaps for tax optimization.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• imaginenore 10y ago
  Buy bitcoin with cash every month on LocalBitcoins. Store bitcoin wallet keys somewhere safe, offline, in at least 2 geographically separated places.
  • DickingAround 10y ago
    This. The asset has a very minimal presence in the physical world (just an encrypted file that is your wallet) so it's pretty easy to make it impossible to prove whether you own any or how many bitcoins.
• nostrademons 10y ago
  Flowers, date nights, and little gifts are all a lot less expensive than offshore financial schemes, a lot more likely to work, and a lot more personally rewarding.
• heyalexej 10y ago
  Each $10K stack of mint $100 bills is just shy under .44″. $50K is rather easy to hide in cash or precious metals. Then there's BTC and other crypto currencies. An amount small enough to fork over to several people you truly trust and have them put it into their savings accounts in case you feel more comfortable that way. But like others have said: premature optimization.
• Joky 10y ago
  > in California where the Divorce laws are heavily in favor of the woman I thought they were in favor of the less rich of the two? I.e. marry a richer women that you are and you'd be the favored one.
  • gamblor956 10y ago
    They do favor the less wealthy spouse. That's why Britney Spears paid Federline several million dollars in alimony. The reason for the apparent gender bias is that the woman is usually the less wealthy spouse, generally because the woman is usually the younger spouse and frequently leaves the workforce or takes lower-paying employment to care for any children that may issue.
    • guitarbill 10y ago
      Depends on what you want. If you only want money, this is true. If you want custody of your children, most of the time women win it. I believe this is true even if the man was looking after the children and the woman was working, although I'm not sure about the US.
    • rmk 10y ago
      Family court is terribly biased against men. http://www.realworlddivorce.com/ http://www.realworlddivorce.com/