Navigating a high-net-worth divorce in New Jersey involves unique challenges, particularly your ability to protect your assets and avoid harming business interests or investments during the divorce process. High-net-worth asset protection during divorce often requires careful, meticulous negotiation and planning.
At Weiner Law Group, we understand the intricacies of high-net-worth divorces and the importance of protecting your assets.
Our team combines family law, estate planning, and business law knowledge to provide comprehensive solutions for complex cases. This approach allows us to address many legal needs, ensuring no detail is overlooked. Reach out to speak with a New Jersey high-net-worth divorce attorney today.
Divorce for High-Net-Worth Individuals
Divorce legally ends a marriage. A divorce decree addresses the following:
- Property division,
- Spousal support, and
- Child-related matters.
A divorce for high-net-worth individuals varies from the average divorce because of the significant amount of property the spouses own. In New Jersey, high-net-worth divorces often include large financial portfolios, business ownership, real estate holdings, and other high-value assets. Dividing these assets while maintaining their value requires dedicated, knowledgeable legal guidance.
Property Division
Property division involves distributing marital property between spouses. Marital property may include tangible or intangible assets acquired during the marriage, such as:
- Income,
- Savings,
- Retirement benefits,
- Real estate,
- Vehicles,
- Stocks or bonds,
- Business interests, and
- Other investments.
Nonmarital (“separate”) property includes that which a spouse obtained:
- Before marriage,
- After separation,
- Through inheritance, or
- Through a gift to one spouse only.
New Jersey law does not mandate an equal split of marital property. Instead, courts deciding how to split property must evaluate what would be equitable (fair) considering factors like how long the couple was married and each spouse’s:
- Contributions to separate and marital property,
- Contributions to the marriage and home,
- Income and relative earning capacity, and
- Separate financial circumstances.
In high-net-worth asset protection, the property division process becomes intricate. Many assets require professional valuation and thorough documentation to prove and maintain worth, like:
- Luxury real estate,
- Art collections, and
- Business interests.
Spouses often disagree over which properties are marital and which are separate, too, requiring careful analysis of the circumstances and the applicable law.
Spousal Support
Spousal support, or alimony, involves payments from one spouse to another during or after divorce. When deciding whether to order one spouse to pay the other spousal support, courts in New Jersey consider factors such as the following:
- Length of the marriage,
- Income and separate financial circumstances of each spouse,
- Earning capacity of each spouse,
- Opportunities a spouse gave up to support the other,
- Cost to increase the lower-earning spouse’s earning capacity, and
- Standard of living during the relationship.
One spouse working outside the home and the other not earning an income can be particularly challenging for high-net-worth divorces.
Child Custody and Support
Child custody involves where a child lives and how parents make decisions about their lives and well-being. Child support is a regular financial contribution one parent makes to the other to support the child and provide for their needs. Typically, the parent who earns more, provides less direct childcare, or both pays the other child support.
In high-net-worth divorces, child-related decisions often involve unique issues like:
- Private school expenses,
- Costs of extracurricular activities, and
- Use of trust funds.
Under New Jersey law, the primary consideration is maintaining the child’s stability and well-being—ensuring your custody and support arrangements are in the child’s best interests.
Unique Challenges Dividing Property in High-Net-Worth Divorces
High-net-worth individuals frequently face divorce challenges related to:
- Valuating complex asset portfolios, like those that include stocks, bonds, and intellectual property;
- One or both spouses having ownership interests in one or more businesses;
- Offshore accounts;
- Cross-state and international assets;
- Whether and which trusts qualify as marital, based on their structure, treatment, and management during the marriage; and
- Incurring significant tax liabilities based on asset transfer, particularly if transfers occur in multiple stages over multiple years.
Proactive planning can minimize these challenges and prevent unexpected consequences during and after divorce.
How to Protect Your Assets from Divorce
Hiring an experienced, meticulous lawyer is a critical first step in the high-net-worth asset protection divorce process. Experienced attorneys provide invaluable insights into how to protect your assets from divorce. We identify potential risks, create carefully tailored legal documents, and coordinate with financial experts. To do so, we use various strategies, which we adapt to your unique circumstances.
Using Prenuptial, Nuptial, and Postnuptial Agreements
Prenuptial agreements establish terms for asset division before you get married. Nuptial agreements occur during the marriage, and postnuptial agreements occur after marriage. Your lawyer can help you negotiate a thorough, efficient agreement with your spouse, regardless of where in the marriage process you are.
Forming Trusts
Trusts in high-net-worth divorce can enable individuals to protect assets, even from their spouses. Asset protection trusts allow a spouse to set aside assets for specific purposes, potentially making the assets unreachable during the divorce.
Effectively shielding assets using a trust requires a careful, meticulous process. For example, funding a trust with marital assets may not protect the assets. For a trust to no longer be part of your marital property, you may also have to make the trust irrevocable—not maintain the power to revoke the trust’s creation and reclaim the assets within.
Consulting Forensic Accountants
Forensic accountants can help individuals in high-net-worth divorces to:
- Uncovering hidden assets,
- Analyze complex financial records, and
- Ensure both spouses disclose all of their marital and separate property.
Forensic accountants specialize in tracing complicated financial matters and can ensure any agreements you reach are complete.
Appraisal Services
Hiring one or more appraisers can ensure your agreements reflect the assets’ actual, fair market value. To determine accurate worth, valuation experts consider factors like market trends, future earning potential, and existing liabilities. Relying on thorough appraisals of asset value can protect both spouses from unfair distribution.
Planning for Business Entities
Establishing specific terms in the governing documents of business entities can prevent business-related assets from becoming marital property. Properly structuring business entities ensures that personal and business finances remain distinct, reducing the risk of the divorce harming the business.
Protect Your Future with a New Jersey High Net Worth Divorce Attorney from Weiner Law Group
Since 1988, Weiner Law Group has been dedicated to protecting and guiding our clients to solutions that account for their unique lives and circumstances. We are passionate about making the legal process less daunting by building strong attorney-client relationships through open communication.
Our attorneys are ready to guide you through any complication. Contact Weiner Law Group today to schedule a consultation.