She has no divorce left: what do you do when your partner runs away with all the money?

The law in the case of divorce dictates an equal division of the property, but many spouses, especially men, initiate the leakage of assets during the marriage.

From transferring money abroad to secretly registering apartments, the tricks are many and the women remain helpless. We entered the interrogation rooms to see what can be done

David Rosenthal

09/20/2022

Tuesday, September 20, 2022, 2:23 p.m

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On video: heated debate in the Constitutional Committee on the prevention of economic violence (photo: Knesset Channel)

"How much of a swindler do you have to be to hide assets and money from the woman who raised your children. How did you manage to sleep with me on the one hand, tell me you love me and at the same time manipulate me in order to hide all the property and money you made from me. When I received the results of the financial investigation I was amazed - 5 million Shekels are coming to me and he tried to paint me a situation where he doesn't have a divorce and the business is in a state of disrepair. The shame is dead."

Meet Yafit, a 42-year-old woman from the central region, and she is angry, reddened with anger at the conduct of her husband, who, like quite a few men in Israel, did everything he could to hide assets and income from her, in order to prevent a situation with him following the divorce, She will receive half of the property accumulated during the marriage.

The law on the subject is quite simple: the Law on Property Relations regulates the way property is divided between married couples and states that all property accumulated during the marriage (and sometimes, also property accumulated by one of the parties before the marriage, as long as the intention of sharing is proven) - will be divided between the parties at the end of the marriage in an equal manner.

But the law is separate and the reality is separate: in practice, many Israeli men (that is, theoretically women can also behave this way, but in 90% - and much more than that - these are men) work systematically to avoid a fair distribution, and they do everything you bring up or It doesn't occur to you, in order to avoid paying your partner what she deserves.

The explanation for the aforementioned behavior is not only based on morbid stinginess on the part of the man: many are motivated by the need to take revenge, so that the female partner will leave the relationship with nothing.

Sometimes, the smuggling of property is done as a result of the sick personality of the partner and does not depend on the marital relationship.

These are usually forceful men, who do not see their spouse as having equal rights to them, and they behave possessively and domineeringly throughout, even if, on the face of it, they are in a stable and benevolent marriage system.

The man works methodically - the woman suddenly discovers that most of the property is gone (Photo: ShutterStock)

How far are those men willing to go?

What measures do they take and how do the women act in order to reveal the true economic situation?

We plunged into the endless world of lies and the tools through which the women manage to get their hands on the money they deserve, and left with second thoughts about morality, good faith, and greed.

At this point, there is a caveat - reality shows that women also mislead the man and try to trick him in order to avoid paying what he deserves, but the statistics on the subject are clear: in most cases it is the woman who falls victim to this depriving behavior.

"There are, in fact, two types of men: the first type are those who behave unilaterally for years, when the partner buries her head in the ground and allows the partner to hold and create changes in the mass of the joint property in his favor," notes attorney Ronan Daliho, a legal expert Family and veteran lawyers in Israel in the field "The second type is the man who decided to separate from his partner and begins to prepare himself for the future.

Preparation often means smuggling property out of the family unit and emptying the shared family economic reserves, so that on the day the family unit breaks up - the distribution of the property will seemingly be done equally, but one of the parties has already taken care of himself and increased his share at the expense of his partner's share."

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"Unbeknownst to me, he transferred the apartment to his parents' name"

There are no shortage of examples of women who discovered that their partner was deceiving them.

"In retrospect, it is clear to me that Danny was a partner from hell. One who never saw me as having equal rights, he separated me during the marriage, and for me it was kind of comforting. He admits his guilt," says Shira, a 39-year-old girl from Ramat Hasharon, "Later, it turned out to me because he fell in love with his accountant, and they concocted a plot together: to transfer everything that is due to me, to her, and for this purpose he harnessed the environment. First, he transferred to his brother a significant part of the shares in the company he worked for. Later, unbeknownst to me, he transferred the apartment which is registered in his name, in the name of his parents."

"This is the classic conduct of a treacherous spouse, who wants to deny his wife the basic right to receive half of the accumulated property. Every day we carry out investigations in such cases," notes Ari Investigations and Business Intelligence, which has been involved in quite a few investigations in high-profile matrimonial cases in recent years.

According to sources in the company, more than once it has been revealed that the spouse registered the property during the marriage in the name of a family member, with the aim of removing it from the mass of joint assets, when often, the spouse does not know at all that the spouse bought property, let alone sold it.

"They enter the market when we reveal to them the true state of his assets and the moves he made to hide it from them: creating loans, transferring assets at a reduced price to family members, loans to family members, etc. There is no end to the tricks and acts of fraud that we encounter."

From an operative point of view, the first step, for example, in the disclosure of disguised real estate assets is the issuing of taboo documents, and a careful examination of them, "but this is the relatively simple part.

The complexity begins when one dives into the tombstone of hidden assets, Ari Investigations says with complete certainty: "There are quite a few men who have two jobs - the first is to make money and buy assets and the second is to hide their traces from their partner and obscure her. This is also a job."

The partner "prepares himself" for the future - and when he leaves, he takes most of the property with him.

Attorney Ronan Daliho (Photo: Public Relations)

When we talk about audacity on the part of those men and a blatant disregard for the duty of cooperation and the principle of good faith, we mean, for example, the following case: two and a half years of psychological treatment were required for Iris until she had the courage to come to the decision to separate from her husband, and then she turned to Attorney Daliho: "Her husband He forced an ascetic and withdrawn lifestyle on her," he says, "every financial expenditure required his approval and he always told her that their financial situation was extremely difficult and they should conduct themselves accordingly.

The children were not sent to summer camps, and there was nothing to talk about with private teachers, so much so that they were sometimes supported by GAMH."

And so, Iris lived for years in poverty, in a chronic reality of scarcity, until the time came when she decided to divorce, and then an inquiry was held "A lawsuit was filed on her behalf for the division of property, and after a few days, the banks' answers regarding the foreclosures arrived - more than 12 million shekels were lying comfortably in the bank accounts, half of which belong to her."

In addition to the aforementioned, hiding assets or carrying out actions to smuggle them out is only one method of operation, of many and varied kinds, where one of those preferred by those men is creating a distorted picture of the cash flow situation of the business or company, while hiding the true accounting reality.

"The husband worked as an electrician who stated that he earns a modest amount of 13,000 shekels a month. On the face of it, he is a reliable man, an exemplary family man, such that you would never assume that he is turning his wife around," they say in the company Ari Hikari, "but we refused to eat the locksmith and we attached a follow-up to him and discovered that he reaches an average of 5 customers a day. The minimum for a visit is 300 shekels, so in the bottom line - he is a 2x wheeler."

Cross country shenanigans

In another case handled by the company, in order to create a situation in which the family companies would be seen as having negative values, the husband created deficits in the company's accounts, and managed the real activity of the companies through a company in which the shares were registered in his mother's name.

The husband claimed that he has no connection to the company except for occasional advice given by him to the company for which he issues invoices.

"In this type of case, it is usually not enough to conduct a basic financial investigation that reveals the network of companies to which he is avowedly connected, but a more in-depth investigation must be conducted using human intelligence, and another series of sophisticated tools. But in the end, even the same man, who thought he was smarter Of all of them, he found himself stuttering in court. We were able to bring an evidentiary infrastructure that proves that there is an affinity between the husband and the company."

Along with all this, the company Ari Investigations points out that sometimes the tricks cross countries, and manipulative techniques are used especially in order to obscure the money as well as the woman.

Accordingly, the investigative challenge is very great.

Thus, for example, they tell about cases in which it turned out that the man created a network of complex business activities, some of them through off-shore companies, whose shares are held in trust, in order to prevent the ability to track the activity.

There is no limit to creativity and cunning, adds Attorney Daliho and says that everything that has been described so far is the tip of the iceberg: "More than once, we come across situations in which fictitious loan agreements were artificially created, presenting debts for the appearance of them, including debts to private individuals, with the aim of including these debts in balancing the resources and reducing the value of the property that can be balanced."

CPA Dodi Amsalem, an expert in investigative audits and a partner in the accounting firm Boyarin Amsalem & Co., is also intimately familiar with all the tricks: "There are those who, for example, deliberately open bank accounts in countries with which Israel does not have a tax treaty, this in order to obscure the traces and make it difficult to trace The money path".

It is much easier today to smuggle assets (Photo: GettyImages, Lightrocket)

Bottom line, Ari Investigations explains that women who get divorced should definitely take into account the possibility that their spouse will try to embezzle money, smuggle assets, and do countless manipulations, in order to pay them less: "There is no place for complacency and certainly not for giving blind trust. Urgency pushes to the side the fairness. This is the reality and whoever believes otherwise is burying their head very deep in the sand."

Attorney Daliho concludes: "There are quite a few couples whose divorce proceedings are conducted in a decent and amicable manner as much as possible and there are also those who get caught up in an overwhelming vortex of lies and disappearance of money or assets.

It is very difficult to reveal the hidden intentions of the parties in the first place and therefore, I recommend to the woman, and also to the man, who feel that the matrimonial ground is shaking and the planning for divorce is increasing, to act as follows: First, independently collect documents, papers and any reference that can reflect the financial situation at home.

In the second stage or in the case where there is no access to the documents, one must contact a private investigator or an attorney. Of course, there is the option of going to court, as part of a property claim, and issuing orders to produce information. Investigations There are quite a few ways to deal with the situation, when the choice is made on the merits of the case."

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• betrayal

• violence