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What are offshore accounts?

Wealthy New York couples have a variety of places to store their assets. These locations need to be accounted for during a high asset divorce. However, some spouses do not maintain all of their assets in the United States. Anyone who is concerned about a spouse hiding assets should consider that their spouse may have stored away money in an offshore account.

Offshore accounts are not complicated. U.S. News and World Report explain that offshore accounts are bank accounts hosted in a different country. Popular films often depict offshore accounts as places for shady characters to hide money, but in reality, Americans park their money overseas for perfectly legitimate reasons. Such rationales include asset diversification or ease of transferring money to foreign relatives and friends.

Trouble arises if a spouse does not report an offshore account as part of his or her assets. If you suspect your spouse is concealing an offshore account, there are ways to find it. People with offshore accounts are required by law to report them to the IRS. In the past, offshore accounts were easier to hide from the federal government, but today the United States has agreements with countries where Americans generally keep accounts to acquire banking information from those countries.

Taking a look at the tax forms of your spouse is one place to check for the existence of an offshore account. Tax forms may also reveal other places, such as forms of business income, where a spouse may have reported income that you did not know about. You might also be on the lookout for cryptocurrency use. Cryptocurrency is not limited to the United States and could be part of a foreign monetary exchange.

This article is written to provide general information on the topic of high asset divorce and is not to be taken as legal advice.