Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

How to pass, fit in, eventually set an example, and ultimately lead the way.
7Wannabe5
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I guess because I need some back story in order to enjoy sex and once you have some back story there is always the danger of entwining future narrative.

Jason

Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Jason »

Maybe you should have bought a DeLorean instead of that smart car.

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Sclass
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Sclass »

C40 wrote:
Fri Oct 04, 2019 10:28 am
Are there certain techniques or strategies you feel the most effective or appropriate fo 'hiding' assets?
No. I don’t do this personally.

I was shown a bunch of ways by guys I don’t respect all that much. They basically say people cannot take what they cannot see. So they keep their money out of sight.

These guys wanted to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to wave around their money as marriage bait but didn’t want to lose it. Or worse, they accumulated the wealth during marriage and didn’t want to lose half in the divorce because they were greedy.

The basic idea was to keep the money out of sight and out of mind. Their wives (I witnessed the divorces) didn’t even do a sufficient asset search because they didn’t know what they were looking for. Some of the tricks were as unsophisticated as keeping stocks out of the account in certificated form. Another guy, our family dentist just hoarded a lot of dental gold at his practice. I met his wife and kids years later and they were destitute. Then there was the illegal stuff like keeping a bank account in another country...apparently this is difficult for U.S. citizens now but it was popular among family friends in the 1980s.

Good luck. My strategy is work hard at your marriage.

Edit - I got to think about this overnight and I’d like to add something. I think a lot of people rely on money a little too much to tip the mating game in their favor. If you go into a relationship using dollar bills as your colorful feathers you’re going to attract a specific kind of attention. If you hide your money and play stealth wealth the immediate result will be diminished reproductive potential if you don’t work on other dimensions of your value. But you’ll less likely set an expectation for a monetary payout from your spouse to be.

My sister pointed out that our sister-in-law deserves significant monetary compensation for having to mate with a gross guy like our brother. While I see her as a gal who has financially exploited the guy, my sister astutely observes that “she has to get something for that.”

And incidentally when she married my brother she demanded publicly that he disclose all assets to her or else if she discovered hidden money later it would be instant divorce. My wife found it humorous that my brother would comply with this tactic because it showed where my sister-in-law stood in terms of power. To this day he is very scared of her divorcing him and taking his piggy bank. SIL was kind of a mail order bride arranged through my parents. My wife suggested we throw her back in the water and try again but my folks already had too much invested in their heritage project. It was kind of a money for marriage deal from the getgo so it had these stipulations built in.

I guess what I’m getting at is if your scared of your mate taking you to family court maybe you have to look a little harder at your own behavior. How you attract. What you attract. How you love. What you provide.

When I say people cannot take what they cannot see I may have been silently thinking “how about not taping your financial statements to your forehead while dating”. Yeah, you may have to be a little more creative and charming but you won’t be advertising that you have something to take in case the marriage fails.

For me, I married my wife when I was broke. I didn’t have much personally and my wealthy family didn’t support me nor my choice of a mate. On a related topic, her dad formed a special set of corporations to hold her family money where she had control over them but no clear line of ownership. This was specifically done to discourage me from financially hurting her during a divorce. It doesn’t bother me if I don’t think about it and it is mostly out of my sight so I cannot take or even covet what I don’t see. And given that our fathers know each other I don’t blame her dad for trying to protect his little girl from my clan. So here I’ve had the tables turned on me and I may be speaking from personal experience when I say you cannot take what you cannot see.

My wife stayed with me for a long time before legally marrying me. This had a lot to do with our families not approving of our choice. We came up financially together and the least I can do for her is give her the money we made together during those years of intense struggle outside the protective (albeit controlling) sphere of our fathers.

Maybe I can refer you to my father-in-law to school you in clever ways to separate control and ownership of assets. I am disappointed that my wife’s sister does not have the same arrangement with her husband. Ironically she has an upcoming divorce that will damage her financially. Someday I should sit down with my FIL, get him drunk, and ask him how his convoluted lock box works. :lol:

Laura Ingalls
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Laura Ingalls »

I am saying this from the perspective of someone that is happy in her marriage and has been married a fairly long time.

I find the thought of being amicably divorced with half of my current net worth way less sad not having DH in my life or our offspring’s lives.

Since we are both cursed with optimizer brains and as DH jokes neither of us being worth anything as a “trade in” neither of us are likely going anywhere. We still like each other too. :mrgreen:

The_Bowme
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by The_Bowme »

jennypenny wrote:
Tue Sep 10, 2019 1:50 pm
@fiby41 -- Don't marry anyone who isn't worth at least half of your net worth to you (as in you'd give 1/2 of your net worth right then for the privilege of marrying them). Then work your ass off to make it a success.
This is a helpful framing, thank you.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

My 100 millionaire friend never married, in good part for this reason. I'm pretty sure he ended up regretting his choice, and his death, with only me and a 25 year old nurse aide( who had just showed up that morning and was playing on her phone)present was pretty sad. My father's death, which was similar to the extent that it was also hospice at home for end-stage cancer, even though he had a bad marriage with my cuckoo-bananas spendthrift mother, was much less sad, because he had 4 daughters who loved him and gathered round. I know it seems pat, but Dickens was really sort of a genius with his creation of the character and story of Scrooge. So, all ye young neo-liberals beware!

Miss Lonelyhearts
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Miss Lonelyhearts »

Sort of??!

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Alphaville
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Alphaville »

Miss Lonelyhearts wrote:
Wed Dec 30, 2020 11:55 am
Sort of??!
he's ok on tv :P :lol:

7Wannabe5
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Lol- My subtext should have been read as something like “Although “Bleak House” was a much better work...”

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Egg
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Egg »

Laura Ingalls wrote:
Tue Dec 29, 2020 1:51 pm
DH jokes neither of us being worth anything as a “trade in”
This made me chuckle. Honestly, I find the OP question difficult to compute, perhaps for somewhat similar reasons to what you mentioned about wanting to keep your DH around even in a divorce scenario. I'm nowhere near you in terms of marriage longevity (still under 2 years) but if our marriage goes to shit, I don't think it'll be the financial side of things that will keep me awake at night.

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Ego
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Ego »

Now that people are coming out of the covid woodwork I've discovered two more divorces in my IRL friends who I haven't seen for a year. And now Bill/Melinda too.

A few weeks ago while researching something about immunity I stumbled upon this article and began to think about it through the lens of these divorces.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ens-taste/
Hidden in a man’s smell are clues about his major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes, which play an important role in immune system surveillance. Studies suggest that females prefer the scent of males whose MHC genes differ from their own, a preference that has probably evolved because it helps offspring survive: couples with different MHC genes are less likely to be related to each other than couples with similar genes are, and their children are born with more varied MHC profiles and thus more robust immune systems.

A study published in August in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, however, suggests that women on the pill undergo a shift in preference toward men who share similar MHC genes. The female subjects were more likely to rate these genetically similar men’s scents (via a T-shirt the men had worn for two nights) as pleasant and desirable after they went on the pill as compared with before. Although no one knows why the pill affects attraction, some scientists believe that pregnancy—or in this case, the hormonal changes that mimic pregnancy—draws women toward nurturing relatives.

Women who start or stop taking the pill, then, may be in for some relationship problems.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Similar effect is observed in fluctuations through normal menstrual cycle. However, very important note would be that having many “normal” menstrual cycles is not the natural norm for women as opposed to being on the pill; being either pregnant or breast-feeding most of the time would be the natural norm. Therefore, arguments have been made that the newer formulations of the pill which allow women to avoid menstruation are actually more in alignment with natural lifestyle than the pill formulations/dosage regimens that are inclusive of regular menstrual cycles. The breast-feeding phase is also quite hormonal different than pregnancy phase. IME, kind of like being a bit stoned much of the time.

Anyways, I have long held the theory that women are subconsciously hormonally motivated to dump or drive off monogamous male partners who don’t knock them up, but as with many natural female tendencies this is written off as a disease known as PMS.

Also, it has been my experience that men I find sexually attractive usually smell musky-sweet to me and those I don’t either smell neutral or stale-acrid. My current “partner”, who is a very conventionally handsome man, often wears expensive male perfume formulation which mimic the sweet-musky smell I like, but otherwise he smells as neutral as our mutual sex life. I don’t know how I ended up stuck with the partner who was just supposed to be the one who was most available for companiable social outings (sigh.) Actually, I do, poor planning..blah, blah, blah.

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Ego
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

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TopHatFox
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by TopHatFox »

Don’t get married.

If you don’t want kids, get the snip.

Have LTRs or STRs, but she has her place + you yours.

—————

Risks are a non-starter, mitigation attempts likely to fail. Even optimizers like MMM failed eventually.

Stahlmann
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Stahlmann »

Interesting come back :lol:

7Wannabe5
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@Ego:

It’s a sweet story, but I can’t help but think that she might have been better off investing her life energy in more extended circle of family and friends.

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Ego
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by Ego »

7Wannabe5 wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:45 pm
It’s a sweet story, but I can’t help but think that she might have been better off investing her life energy in more extended circle of family and friends.
Was there something that made you believe she didn't invest some of her energy in an extended circle? Perhaps I missed it.

I thought they were a good example of the kind of person to look for in a spouse. In other words, look for a person who talks about you, and visa versa, in the way these two spoke about one another. That is, if one wants a long-term relationship.

They are an extreme example. Not necessarily something to shoot for. More like a reminder (for myself?) of the direction I would like to go. Certainly not for everyone.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

“Ego” wrote: Was there something that made you believe she didn't invest some of her energy in an extended circle? Perhaps I missed it.
The part where she is at the altar alone and then also alone again after his death. Also the part where he talks about her finding a new husband after he is gone. Even the most well-meaning, devoted husbands can be selfish like that.

Of course, even though I am currently not feeling well, I am going through a phase where I am absolutely relishing living all by myself and having to consult with nobody about any of my plans or druthers. Pretty much zero interest in pair bonding, my interest in acquiring a husband is about on par with my interest in acquiring a full-time job; would have to be such a terrific opportunity I can’t even imagine it, so huge grain of salt, etc.

liberty
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by liberty »

The best way to hedge a risk is to not take it in the first place. Marriage is extremely risky and something you should never do. I know this is easier said and done when you are in love and maybe even getting manipulated by another person. But what's the point of getting married? Is there any upside at all? If you want possibility to inherit from each other, then that can be done through contracts.

white belt
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Re: Mitigating the risk of losing 50% in divorce

Post by white belt »

liberty wrote:
Wed Mar 23, 2022 8:49 am
But what's the point of getting married? Is there any upside at all? If you want possibility to inherit from each other, then that can be done through contracts.
By avoiding marriage you will also introduce other risks.

It's been well covered in other threads that there are practical benefits to getting married (at least in the USA, not sure about other places):

-spousal employee benefits
-tax benefits (particularly if spouses have different income levels)
-legal/medical directive rights
-citizenship
-cultural acceptance (in many cultures, you won't officially become a "member" of your partner's family/tribe until you are legally married)

Basically, there are benefits associated with being recognized as a married unit in the eyes of many institutions.

I suspect the fear of losing "everything" in divorce is a <WL6 phenomenon, because after that point one realizes that there are other forms of capital beyond financial. Similarly, those who are pursuing traditional FIRE instead of ERE will likely feel more vulnerable to such risks.

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