When Your Spouse’s Mental Illness Impacts YOUR Financial Situation

When you’re in the midst of a divorce, and your spouse suddenly demonstrates mental health issues or has a serious mental health relapse, your finances and your settlement could be seriously impacted. You need the best legal counsel to act quickly and protect your assets and financial future. You need the experienced divorce attorney team at Karen Ann Ulmer, P.C.

It is not unusual for a person with a mental illness to be high-functioning and high-income. But sometimes, in the midst of a divorce, a mentally unstable person may lose his or her job, or even quit, due to stress or erratic behavior. This in itself can be detrimental to your finances, especially if your spouse would be paying child support. But it can be even worse if he or she starts spending.

Avoiding financial responsibility

Sometimes the newly-unemployed or underemployed spouse will start spending, for instance, buying a house, going on an expensive vacation, buying gifts for a new love interest, etc. This needs to be stopped immediately, and you will need the court to intervene.

In the case of quitting a job, your spouse may be attempting to avoid the responsibility of support. The court does not look kindly upon such behavior and will usually impute income to your spouse, calculating spousal and child support based on real potential income, as if your spouse were still working. This would also be the case if your soon-to-be ex left an executive job to flip burgers. This is intentional underemployment and would be treated that way.

Intentional excessive spending during a divorce is considered dissipation of marital assets, an attempt to decrease the money available so the other spouse gets less in the divorce. However, this generally backfires on the spender because if you can demonstrate the waste, the court could still hold the spender responsible for that portion of the assets.

As soon as you suspect reckless spending, you must act in order to limit the loss. We will immediately petition the court for interim relief, as defined in PA law:

“Where it appears to the court that a party is about to leave the jurisdiction of the court or is about to remove property of that party from the jurisdiction of the court or is about to dispose of, alienate or encumber property in order to defeat equitable distribution, alimony pendente lite, alimony, child and spousal support or a similar award, an injunction may issue to prevent the removal or disposition and the property may be attached as prescribed by general rules.” 23 Ps. CSA 3505(a)

This means that if it looks like a spouse is trying to remove assets from the jurisdiction of the court in any way (including spending or destruction), the court can freeze accounts and take any other steps necessary to prevent your spouse from dissipating any more assets.

Documentation

In order to claim the financial settlement and support that you believe you are entitled to, you will need to thoroughly document your spouse’s income over the years, what your finances were before filing the divorce (your family finances and each of your finances, if money was kept separately), and any evidence that you have that money is being spent to adversely affect the equitable distribution of marital assets.

The dissipation does not have to be deliberate. Your mentally ill spouse may just be behaving irrationally, without intending to hurt you. But you still need to protect yourself and your children by guaranteeing your financial future. Request a confidential consultation today by calling (866) 349-4721. We can help you as you divorce your mentally ill spouse and protect what should be legally yours.