Prenup Vehicles Offshore Can Contain Marital Assets Too

 By Philip Segal

One of the core principles of good investigation is to assume nothing and start looking from scratch. We have found a lot of money over the years hiding in plain sight: in new companies named after old companies in neighboring states, or even in places mentioned in emails left lying around the house.

Liberian corporations, apartments in Monaco, it’s amazing what turns up among forgotten papers in desk drawers (or on shared computers at home).

One plain sight source for possible martial assets is the structure set up at the time of a prenuptial agreement. That may seem counterintuitive. Why go after something that is not a marital asset and is contractually off-limits?

For the very simple reason that a structure set up with non-marital assets could be a perfect place to hide cash that is properly subject to division at the time of divorce.

Consider the advice of Chicago divorce lawyer Thomas J. Handler, writing in the New York Times a couple of years ago here. He argued in favor of a “stealth” prenup, which is a structure of an offshore trust, combined with a limited liability company and a management company that could be a conventional corporation or another LLC.

That’s a lot of layers and foreign borders to work through and may not be worth it unless there’s considerable money at stake. But if there is, these vehicles can be detected and breached, especially if there is a U.S. corporate vehicle attached to them.

We specialize in finding side companies that people wish to keep secret, and have written about the process many times, including here, where we wrote about secret partnerships as well as LLC’s.

Secrecy is often the most important thing about stealth prenups. As Handler wrote,

A key element of this technique is that it is, in fact, “stealthy”; no disclosure obligation is necessary because these structures have been put in place prior to marriage. Unlike traditional prenuptial agreements, where there is little chance of enforcement without the exchange of full and accurate financial information, no such requirement applies to the stealth prenup.

Even if a prenup should name the offshore-linked assets that are off-limits, they are worth a look anyway. What if the structure has changed over the years? What if cash from marriage should have been placed in the structure supposedly restricted to the pre-marriage assets?

If you don’t look for it, you won’t find it. With a lot of money at issue, that would be a real shame.

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