CALIFORNIA — A 2007 appellate divorce case has brought recent light to the theme of full financial leak in California divorce law.

In In re Marriage of Feldman, a businessman did not tell particular assets and financial transactions to his wife, even if she repeatedly requested the information. Among the information Feldman wouldn’t reveal was the formation of several new companies. Mrs. Feldman had cultured about her husband’s undisclosed assets before the divorce examination and provided her own investigation into the discovery.

Feldman claimed that his lack of leak was not intentional and that the secret assets were of small value compared to the whole of the estate. Though, the California Court of Appeals rejected these arguments, stating that a divorcing spouse has a duty to tell everything, which is mandatory until all assets are divided, and that such refusal to do so is not acceptable. According to the Court, Feldman was obliged to tell all material information in prose, continue to supplement the discovery, and tell material info before any new project started.

In the end, even though the hidden assets and transactions had not economically hurt Mrs. Feldman in any way, the examination court chose that Feldman should pay his wife $250,000 in sanctions for his failure to comply with the requested leak — as well as another $140,000 in her attorney fees. The court ordered the sanctions under the sections of the TX Family Law Code correlated to fiduciary duty.

The moral seems to be that hiding vital financial information from your spouse is never a excellent thought. The consequences of doing so, such as the results of the Feldman case, could be far more costly than simply agreeing to a honest property division.