Offshore/secret bank account to stash the cash ?????

Saeed

A friend of mine has a query relating to pre-marital assets and I was hoping some of you may be able to help. The story is that he has approx £100,000 in savings as well as a house now worth £200,000 mortgage free. He is due to get married in the next year or so and is wanting advice on how he can protect these assets if things didn't work out as obviously all these assets have been accumulated before marriage. His concerns are that if he gets divorced he may lose £150,000 ....so the plan is to put them offshore for approx 5 yrs and by that time he will know if the marriage is going to last and if it does he can bring them back to UK.

The question is does anyone have any ideas on putting these assets in an offshore bank account where they will be safe and relatively easy to get to and how to go about it?? [forget the marriage advice - eg don't get married etc I have already had that...just concentrate on where to hide the stash and how to do it!]

amcluesent

Probably easier and cheaper, if the marriage fails, to employ an EE hit-man so her indoors has an 'accident'. Then he can pocket the life insurance too.

LittleVoice

Can anyone help this poster hide a house offshore? Perhaps dismantle and re-erect elsewhere?

tom188

if that is the way he is thinking, i suggest he should not be getting married at all.

nrsql

Why is he getting married if he thinks like that.
Feel sorry for his fiancee.

Assume this isn't serious.

tom188

Can anyone help this poster hide a house offshore? Perhaps dismantle and re-erect elsewhere?

Maybe follow a similar path to the baltic exchange http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6230390.stm

Optimist

If he isn't going to tell his wife I assume he also isn't going to tell the taxman in which case he will have more than his wife to contend with. Mr Browns hitmen (or Alistair Darlings now) will be after him. Banks are now required to disclose British residents' oversees accounts.

rich68

Personally I think this is a valid question. Too many women have cleaned their ex-husbands out after a divorce. Of course you want the marriage to work out but we have to face the reality. All it takes is for the guy's wife to run off with another bloke and she could claim half his assets even if they were accumulated before the wedding. The law would probably rule in the wife's favour too. The taxman is the least of his worries.

It's true with the european savings directive that the offshore banks provide info to the British authorities. But I think this was set up to protect the taxman's interest (apart from the money laundering and terrorism issues). Whether or not they would spill the beans in the event of a divorce I don't know. I suppose the divorce courts may well request copies of the guy's tax returns, in which case he would have to explain why he is paying tax on the offshore interest. Even if the funds are offshore I think the wife would have a claim to them legally so there may be no solution. Perhaps an option would be to move to a country with fairer laws if one exists.

I am sure the guy would like to share his wealth with his wife during his marriage, but certainly not after it.

Biggles

rich68 wrote: »

Too many women have cleaned their ex-husbands out after a divorce.

Oops! I'll get in quickly before the flurry!

Perhaps a pre-nuptial agreement would be better than being devious, and probably being illegal? But I agree that probably the best thing is not to get married at all if that's his attitude to it.

BWZN93

A pre-nup might not necessarily be recognised in court - see http://www.crillcanavan.com/content/132/index.html

Maybe putting it into some kind of trust? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5144484.stm provides a bit of basic info. He would need to seek proper advice and have a trust set up naming himself as the beneficiary, in effect giving the money over to someone else who can only use it in the best interests of the beneficiary.

Jo x

Lavendyr

Prenup?

Edit: ah, beaten to it while reading an old page :P I'm not sure a pre-nup would actually work, not to mention that I think they can potentially be damaging to any marriage to follow, since the marriage begins from the premise that one day it could end.

He really is best off just not getting married if he is at all worried about the situation.