Hidden assets, and the spouse who handles the money.
In most marriages one spouse pays the bills, files the returns, and knows where the accounts are. In a divorce that spouse has a head start, and a few of them use it. Wyoming gives the other spouse real tools to catch up: sworn disclosures, subpoenas, depositions, forensic accountants, and a judge who can divide the property unequally when one spouse has moved it. This page explains how the money is found and what the court does when it is.
Call or text me. Clients get my cell number from day one, and I answer. Just been served? Here's what happens next.
Three things the law gives the spouse without the passwords.
Within thirty days after the answer is due, each spouse must serve schedules of every account, asset, debt, safe deposit box, job, income source, and retirement plan, with values and account numbers (W.R.C.P. 26(a)(1.1)). They are sworn and the duty to supplement continues. The disclosures page covers them; the omission is the first clue.
The court may compel either spouse to attend and answer under oath about "his property, rights or interests," including money owed to the spouse by others, and may enforce its orders by attachment, commitment, or injunction (W.S. § 20-2-112(a)). That is on top of the ordinary civil rules: interrogatories, document requests, depositions, and subpoenas to anyone who holds the records.
Wyoming has no fixed split. The court divides all property "as appears just and equitable, having regard for the respective merits of the parties" (W.S. § 20-2-114). A spouse who hid or moved money has given the judge a merit to weigh, and the usual answer is that the concealing spouse is charged with what they moved.
How money hides, and how it is found.
Hidden money is rarely buried. It is deferred, misdescribed, or moved to a place the other spouse does not think to look. A bonus is postponed until after the decree. A business owner pays personal expenses through the company and reports a loss. Cash from a guiding, contracting, or restaurant business never reaches a bank. A brokerage account is opened in a parent's name. Property is bought through an LLC in another state. Crypto is purchased from an account the other spouse has never seen. A spouse "lends" money to a sibling who will return it after the case.
Each of those leaves a record somewhere, and discovery is the business of finding the somewhere. The tax returns are the first place I look, because they are signed under penalty of perjury and they list interest, dividends, rental income, partnership distributions, and capital gains from accounts that have a habit of being left off the schedule. Loan applications are the second, because a spouse who wanted a mortgage swore to a net worth that may be hard to reconcile with the one now claimed. Bank statements are the third, and they are read for what left as much as for what arrived: a wire to an exchange, a check to a title company, a monthly transfer to an account nobody has produced.
When the records are held by someone other than your spouse, a subpoena brings them in without asking permission. When they require an expert to read, a forensic accountant reconstructs the cash flow and, where a company is involved, the value the books understate; the high-net-worth page covers valuation in more depth. When the only witness is your spouse, a deposition puts them under oath with the documents in front of them. People who are vague on a schedule are much less vague across a table.
- 01The Rule 26 disclosures, read against the tax returns for income from accounts that are not listed
- 02Interrogatories and document requests to your spouse: every account, every transfer over a set amount, every entity, every loan application
- 03Subpoenas to banks, brokerages, lenders, employers, accountants, exchanges, and business partners, in Wyoming or elsewhere
- 04A forensic accountant for cash businesses, closely held companies, and lifestyle-to-income gaps
- 05Tracing: following a transfer from the marital account through every stop to where it sits now
- 06Your spouse's deposition, taken after the documents are in, not before
- 07A motion to compel, with fees, when any of the above is ignored or answered with objections
A contested Wyoming case runs on the court's scheduling order; discovery closes before trial, and a request served late is a request not answered. The search starts at the first meeting.
What the court does with what is found.
- Compels the answer. A spouse who will not produce is ordered to, by a date, with the other side's fees on the motion. Ignoring that order invites findings that the hidden facts are established, exclusion of the spouse's own evidence, and in the worst cases a default on the issue. The court may enforce its orders about property by attachment, commitment, or injunction (W.S. § 20-2-112(a)).
- Freezes what is left. On request, the court restrains both spouses from transferring, encumbering, or hiding property while the case is pending; in Teton County that order is entered immediately. The temporary orders page covers it. A spouse already caught moving money is the strongest case for asking.
- Charges the mover. Money moved to defeat the divorce is counted as if the spouse still had it. The property statute weighs "the respective merits of the parties," and the practical result is that the spouse who hid an account is awarded it at full value, recoverable or not, and the other spouse gets more of what remains (W.S. § 20-2-114).
- Remembers. A judge who has found that one spouse lied about money resolves close questions on alimony, fees, and the children against that spouse, because credibility is evidence on everything. A decree procured by concealment can be reopened afterward. The property division page covers how the court divides what it finds.
Cash, companies, trusts, and the other state.
Where money hides in a Jackson Hole marriage, what tracing proves, and how Teton County handles discovery fights
Cash businesses and the seasonal economy
Jackson runs on businesses that take cash and make most of their money in two seasons: outfitters and guides, contractors, restaurants and bars, short-term rentals, snow removal. A spouse who owns one controls the books, and the books in a divorce year have a way of showing a loss. The method is the same every time. Deposits are compared to reported receipts. Personal spending that ran through the company is added back. The lifestyle the household actually lived is reconstructed from credit card statements and compared to the income that supposedly paid for it. A business that paid for two cars, a ski pass, and a trip to Baja did not lose money that year. Where the gap is large, a forensic accountant turns the comparison into a report and a witness; where it is small, a careful deposition does the same work for less. Actual earnings, not the return, set child support, and the same reconstruction sets the value of the business.
Tracing, and what it proves
Tracing follows a dollar from the account where it was marital to the place it is now, and it works in both directions. A spouse who claims an asset came from an inheritance has to trace it from the estate to the present account; the property division page explains why that matters when all property is before the court. A spouse who suspects money was moved traces it the other way: the fifty thousand dollars that left the joint account in March, the entity that received it, the cabin the entity bought. The records are bank statements, closing statements, wire confirmations, and entity filings, most of which can be subpoenaed from people with no interest in the divorce and no reason to lie. Where the trail crosses a state line, the subpoena is domesticated in that state's court, a step that adds a few weeks and little else.
Trusts, family money, and the parent's name
Family money is common here, and it is the most frequent hiding place because it is the most plausible one: property bought with a parent's money and titled in the parent's name, a trust that pays for the household but is said to belong to someone else, a loan to a sibling that will be forgiven after the decree. The questions are the same for each: who controls it, who benefits, when was it moved, and what did the marriage pay for it. A revocable trust the spouse controls is treated as the spouse's property. A transfer made during the case, or in the months before it, without value in return, is charged against the spouse who made it. A genuine third-party trust is harder, and the inquiry turns to what the beneficiary receives and whether it supported the marriage. All of it requires the instrument and the returns, and all of it is obtainable. People who tell me a trust is "untouchable" have usually never been asked for the trust.
In Teton County
Discovery disputes in the county's district court are usually referred to a special master, and the court's scheduling order sets an expedited period for responding to discovery motions, so a stonewalling spouse does not get the months an ordinary motion calendar would give them. A spouse who answers every request with an objection in order to withhold information should expect sanctions. Restraining orders on assets are entered immediately on request. The case is heard by the county's one district judge, in the temporary courtrooms at 250 E. Simpson Ave.; the courthouse page has the details. The spouse who handled the money often assumes the other one will never understand it. My job is to make that assumption expensive. The divorce page covers the case as a whole; the step-by-step page shows where discovery falls in the calendar.
Questions people ask about hidden money.
How do I know if my spouse is hiding money?
What can a subpoena reach?
What does a forensic accountant do, and is it worth the cost?
Can cryptocurrency really be found?
My spouse put property in a trust or a family member's name. Is it gone?
What happens to a spouse who is caught?
Start with a confidential conversation with Aaron Herzberg.
A consultation is a scheduled working session, in person in Jackson or by video, in which we go through your situation and I tell you what I would do. It is a paid working session, not a sales pitch. The fee is quoted when we schedule. Your note reaches me directly, my office runs the conflicts check and puts the meeting on my calendar, and you can call or text any time.
40 E Simpson Ave, Jackson, WY 83001 · by appointment · video consultations for out-of-state clients · info@puzzlegroup.com