Dirty Money Tricks in Divorce: What Spouses Hide and How Attorneys Find It with Attorney Sarah Preisinger

Episode Notes

Transcript

David Crum [00:00:00]:
Are there times when, like, you’re the first to know, you know, like, what in the world is this? And what have you found that just shocks you that people are spending money on that their spouse doesn’t know about?

Sarah Preisinger [00:00:13]:
Yeah, I am sometimes really surprised. You know, I’ll get a big old stack of bank records in discovery, and it’s pretty clear to me that opposing counsel didn’t look at them before they sent them to me. I recently had a case where I’m looking at opposing party’s bank records, and I see that there’s a lot of money leaving the account going to an inmate. Mate in a Texas prison.

Brooke Mathieu [00:00:33]:
What?

Sarah Preisinger [00:00:34]:
And a bunch of money going to psychics.

David Crum [00:00:37]:
All right. Welcome to the show, everybody. We have a doozy of a topic today. So, Brooke, I hope you’re ready. Are you ready to talk about some of the financial games and some of the dirty little tricks people play on their spouses?

Brooke Mathieu [00:00:49]:
Let’s get messy.

David Crum [00:00:50]:
Well, now, you might know this. I mean, most people see this. They see people living in a mansion, driving a Mercedes. And then when it comes time to pay child support or pay their bills, lo and behold, They don’t have any money, Brooke.

Brooke Mathieu [00:01:04]:
Make it make sense.

David Crum [00:01:06]:
It doesn’t make any sense. But we do have somebody who’s going to come on the show and make it make sense. And honestly, it’s not that difficult to uncover and there’s a lot you can do about it. So before we go any further, I want to remember to ask people, people who are listening and watching, I would love to hear your comments about what you’ve seen happen, what might have happened to you, what you might have seen happen to somebody else in terms of people playing games with money, whether it’s their child support, whether it’s the property they own, whether it’s how much they make or they don’t make, so that we can all learn something. Because the truth is—

Brooke Mathieu [00:01:43]:
Foreign bank accounts.

David Crum [00:01:45]:
I’ve been doing this for so long and I always think I’ve seen it all. And then someone will tell me something that I never thought of. And that’s why we’re bringing our guest on today. She is a badass in this field and has been doing this for a long time. So not only does she catch these people always, but she always makes them pay. And then, Brooke, I was going to keep this as a surprise, but I believe one of the things that we’re going to talk about is near and dear to your heart, and that is—

Brooke Mathieu [00:02:13]:
Okay, tell me.

David Crum [00:02:14]:
What do you do and how do you handle it if your spouse is paying money to— wait for it— an inmate in prison?

Brooke Mathieu [00:02:22]:
Oh, you know I love my inmates. Not me specifically loving inmates, but I love my reality shows about inmates.

David Crum [00:02:31]:
I know you’re fascinated by this, so I think you’re going to find this conversation fascinating. And get ready, write them down, because you can ask all the questions you could ever think about, uh, for situations like that. So before we bring on Sara, um, I have a question for you. If you were—

Brooke Mathieu [00:02:47]:
Okay.

David Crum [00:02:47]:
And I know you’re not, I know you’re not, but if you were a sneaky spouse and you had to hide money, like, what, what do you think you do? What would be your approach to hide money From your husband?

Brooke Mathieu [00:03:00]:
If I was sneaky, if I wanted to be evil, maybe I’d start with an Ambien or a magnesium cocktail, slip it to my husband, then I’d get his facial recognition, get into his bank account. I’d send a deposit to me. I’d take the deposit, I’d cash it. I’d get a secret vault somewhere, stash the money. I don’t have it. I don’t know where it went.

David Crum [00:03:36]:
This sounds to me like you might have been thinking about— you’re thinking about this a little bit more than I’m comfortable with. I think it’s a great plan. The only thing I would do is I would transfer that money to an offshore bank account. But I think you’re on to something.

Brooke Mathieu [00:03:47]:
Transfer it to an offshore bank account, take a flight to Paris, And never come back.

David Crum [00:03:53]:
I think you’re on to something here. But anyway, we’ll see what Sarah has to say. So, uh, without any further ado, let’s bring on our next guest, or our guest for the show, attorney Sarah Preisinger. Brooke, it is my pleasure today to bring to the show one of my favorite attorneys, Sarah Preisinger. And I have— there’s 2 reasons she’s my favorite. One, she never stops talking. So, very easy podcast guest, makes my life easier. And the second one is we’re here to talk about little financial games people play.

David Crum [00:04:30]:
But guess what, Brooke? They don’t play them on Sara’s watch. Not on Sara’s watch. She’s too smart for that. So, she’s going to entertain us today, but she’s going to tell us what to look for and how not to get taken to the cleaners by our spouses when we’re in the litigation process. So, just a quick Note on Sarah’s background. Sarah, I think you’ve been doing this for 17 years now.

Brooke Mathieu [00:04:53]:
Yeah. Yeah.

David Crum [00:04:54]:
Am I not supposed to say that to female attorneys? Anyway, she’s got a lot of experience is my point. And the other thing I love is that she started out in the trenches as a child support enforcement attorney with CSED. And I think you were the, like, a district director there. So she’s seen it all in terms of people not paying, not wanting to pay. And but she’d make them pay. And we’re going to learn how she did that.

Brooke Mathieu [00:05:20]:
She’s a badass.

David Crum [00:05:22]:
She’s a badass.

Sarah Preisinger [00:05:24]:
Every chance I get.

David Crum [00:05:25]:
So she worked that, and then she came, joined us as an elite attorney at Nebraska Legal Group, and so practices in private practice now. So, Sarah, as I always say, I know everybody is busy, so thanks for taking the time to come onto the show.

Sarah Preisinger [00:05:41]:
Oh, no, excited to be here. I mean, not least of all, because to your point, it gives me a chance to chat.

David Crum [00:05:46]:
That’s right. That’s right. One of your favorite things. So when you think about this, when we, when I, when I said the topic, you know, asked you to talk about the topic that we called financial games people play and other dirty tricks, like what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear that?

Sarah Preisinger [00:06:02]:
Absolutely. The first thing that comes to mind is the person who’s living in a great big fancy house, driving the expensive car and claiming they’re only making about $40,000 a year on their taxes.

David Crum [00:06:13]:
Oh my God.

Sarah Preisinger [00:06:14]:
It’s the worst.

David Crum [00:06:15]:
We’ve all seen that. We’ve all seen that. So how does that come about anyway? So like, give us— set the kind of stage for this. How does this even happen? Because we— it seems like we see that all the time on TV or we hear about it all the time. So can you set the stage on how people actually pull this off or try to pull this off?

Sarah Preisinger [00:06:33]:
Well, one of the ways that they try to pull it off is they’re self-employed. And so they aren’t getting a separate return or any kind of documentation from an employer about what they’re making. And so they’re writing off all kinds of stuff. through their business. Sometimes that’s their vehicle, sometimes it’s even something like a boat. And so, they’re minimizing on paper what it looks like their actual income is because they want to pay less in child support, or they want to have to give up less in a financial division of assets, things like that. But when you start digging into those tax returns, then you see where that money’s really flowing.

Brooke Mathieu [00:07:05]:
So, what you’re saying is start a business, write everything off.

David Crum [00:07:11]:
Yes, it’s a write-off, right? You guys know what a write-off is?

Sarah Preisinger [00:07:14]:
Yeah, it’s just like in Schitt’s Creek where he says, you know, they ask who pays for it, he says nobody, it’s a write-off.

Brooke Mathieu [00:07:20]:
Right, right.

David Crum [00:07:21]:
So this is what people really have to be, I think, aware of if they’re divorcing somebody who’s— who runs a business. Um, this is where we see it abused the most. And sometimes, Sarah, uh, I would imagine this can be like an awkward conversation because aren’t— aren’t the spouses kind of involved in this to some degree? Sometimes when, when, when they’re living together, they sometimes really have been.

Sarah Preisinger [00:07:44]:
They’ve certainly often had the benefit of, you know, again, their car payment is being absorbed by the business or travel expenses maybe are being absorbed by the business. And so when it comes down to it and you have to have that conversation about that income is going to be added back so that you’re going to benefit from it in a different way, that can be a hard adjustment to make, though.

David Crum [00:08:05]:
I’ve seen that. You got to have that conversation and what that’s really going to mean to people.

Sarah Preisinger [00:08:09]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:08:10]:
So basically, for people listening, It’s just that I’ve got a business and basically every expense I have— sometimes I’ve seen a mortgage, their home mortgage paid for by the business. So of course, they’re going to pay very, very little taxes on that. And then when it comes time to divorce, they’re going to want to say, I don’t have any money. Yeah, any money to pay child support.

Sarah Preisinger [00:08:31]:
Yeah. And they very much will claim to be cash poor and say, oh my gosh, look at my tax returns. I’ve only made this minimal amount. I can’t possibly divert any of the money from, you know, my jet ski payment to pay child support.

David Crum [00:08:46]:
So what do you say to the spouse who knows they’re going to divorce somebody like this? What should they do? Is there preplanning? Are there steps they should take before they file?

Sarah Preisinger [00:08:54]:
Absolutely. That’s one of the first conversations I have with anyone who comes to see me. Sometimes they are really ready to, you know, they want to file this week. And I will say before we file, I want us to have as much documentation, as much information as we can have, especially because often when you file, Things that you’ve had joint access to, that just goes away, and you can’t see those things anymore. And while we can still track them down through discovery, if somebody comes and has a more realistic picture of what is actually out there, that’s really helpful. And it also makes less work once the process gets started if they have that documentation. So I always encourage people, if you’re on joint accounts, get copies of bank statements, get copies of credit card records, all of those details. And I also think, you know, When you have the opportunity to sign off on a joint tax return every year, look at it, see what it actually says.

Sarah Preisinger [00:09:47]:
Um, because as I said, digging through that tax documentation is often really, really revealing.

David Crum [00:09:52]:
Yeah. What about— and I don’t want to put you on the spot here, but what about a little bit of a cash grab before, um, people file? Because I’ve seen, especially the person who controls it, like the minute that petition gets filed, boom, They’re just cut off and they don’t even have money to pay for an attorney. How do you deal with that?

Sarah Preisinger [00:10:10]:
So I think it is really important to have that financial planning, that financial consideration before you do file. I actually have a case where the person who initially filed, who was the opposing party, about 8 days before she filed for divorce, she wrote herself a $50,000 check to cash. So she was, I suppose, planning in her own way. But I think setting aside some amounts and having your own separate account, it can be really important.

Brooke Mathieu [00:10:36]:
But what do you do when a situation like that where like they put money aside before they filed? Can you get in trouble for something like that? Like the opposing party, can they— are there repercussions?

David Crum [00:10:48]:
Look at moralistic Brooke.

Sarah Preisinger [00:10:50]:
Well, I certainly think— I mean, definitely it’s a moral problem, but I think it can also really be a legal problem because that’s not for a marital purpose. I think there’s a really strong argument that setting aside that amount of money in particular, which is more than you need for regular living expenses, certainly, That shows dissipation of marital assets. And I think when it comes time to really divide all of those things, that person’s going to have to account for that $50,000 because they essentially prepaid themselves.

David Crum [00:11:19]:
Yeah, but isn’t that okay? Because they’re gonna— it doesn’t matter. They were gonna have to do that anyway. It’s just that they at least they have access to it, right? I mean, is this one of the— what’s that saying where it’s like, do whatever and then ask permission later? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Sarah Preisinger [00:11:34]:
Rather than begging for— rather than asking for permission, you should beg for forgiveness, I think.

Brooke Mathieu [00:11:38]:
Yeah. Yeah.

David Crum [00:11:39]:
Is this one of those?

Sarah Preisinger [00:11:40]:
And I do think to some extent that that is something that’s okay to do, to put some of that money aside for yourself to make sure, you know, you are going to be able to afford an attorney, you are going to be able to afford to live in the meantime. But to be conscious that when it’s all said and done, and we come to the final settling, those amounts are still going to be accounted for.

David Crum [00:11:58]:
Yeah. So you know that Brooke and I share the background of living and having lived in New Mexico together, right?

Brooke Mathieu [00:12:04]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:12:05]:
So Brooke will attest to this. One thing we used to see all the time there was, I don’t own anything, but my mom owns it, or my sister owns it. You know what I’m talking about, Brooke?

Brooke Mathieu [00:12:17]:
Yeah, it’s the, the VATA way. Put it in my mom’s account.

David Crum [00:12:23]:
The VATA way. Wow, it’s incredible how much property mom owns. Yeah, what a, what a car she’s driving. So obviously, that’s, that’s a tactic that people use. How do you deal with that? I know people watching are going to have this come up. So everything’s in somebody else’s name. Yeah. What, what is the relief there?

Sarah Preisinger [00:12:43]:
Well, and again, that’s tracking down those records, digging through where did that money really come from? And especially if that money came from marital sources while the people were married, then that’s money and assets that we’re going to trace back to that estate and they’re going to be up for division. And I— we see it also sometimes here with if we’re doing a modification, something like that. someone has put assets or other items in their spouse’s, their new spouse’s name, and they want to claim, oh, that came from this person. Okay, well then let’s talk about, does that person earn anything, or did this money really come from what you should have been using to meet your own obligations?

David Crum [00:13:21]:
The other thing I want you to talk about for listeners is a lot of people get threatened with this in the beginning of a case. They’ll say, you know, to the spouse, listen, you’re not going to get anything out of this because We don’t own anything. Nothing’s in our name. How worried should people be? Can you give a little bit of like, oh, like it’s not so bad advice?

Brooke Mathieu [00:13:40]:
Yeah.

Sarah Preisinger [00:13:42]:
Well, and I also think that that’s back to keeping records and knowing as much as you can. That information is really power in a situation like that. And I do think it’s really common that people will say, well, you’re not going to get anything. They can’t prove I make anything. They can’t prove I own anything. But it turns out, we actually can prove those things. So we’re going to dig into business records. We’re going to dig into who actually owns this corporation, all of that kind of stuff.

Sarah Preisinger [00:14:08]:
We also see sometimes fractional farm and ranching interests that somebody says, oh, well, I don’t really benefit from any of this now. It’s all supposed to be in my inheritance, and I’m eventually going to get it. So teasing that detail out as well about what’s actually inheritance, what’s something this person is presently controlling, that can be be really important too.

David Crum [00:14:30]:
Yeah. I’m dying to hear your thoughts on how AI gets into this because a lot of clients, I think, are using it and a lot of clients are actually using AI to ask how to hide their assets.

Brooke Mathieu [00:14:43]:
Yes.

David Crum [00:14:44]:
Right. Have you seen any of this? Like, what, what do people need to be aware of in this?

Brooke Mathieu [00:14:48]:
The things people use AI for, like, do they not think that this can all get, what’s the legal word, subpoenaed? Is that what you would say?

David Crum [00:14:56]:
Well, how to dispose of a dead body like that, right?

Sarah Preisinger [00:15:01]:
How to get bloodstains out of my couch, uh, right? But no, I— that is all, Brooke, to your point, that’s all discoverable. Um, and there’s no expectation of privacy in a consumer AI engine. So if you put all of your secrets into that AI engine, then you should expect that the other side is going to find out what they are and know what they are and be able to anticipate every single move that you make. So don’t feed all of your secrets into ChatGPT or Claude or any other version of consumer AI because it will absolutely backfire. And not only will you not probably learn the effective way to protect assets, you’re opening yourself up to just huge amounts of information being turned over to the other side.

David Crum [00:15:49]:
And is that— isn’t that true too? Can you say a little bit about people who are using AI that are representing themselves and using AI, and they seem to think that like it’s their attorney, there’s— they have some protection over that information.

Sarah Preisinger [00:16:04]:
No. And they do think that often. That’s been my experience with people who represent themselves, that they’re getting advice from AI, but there’s no expectation of privilege. There’s no expectation of privacy. So not only are they releasing all of that information out into the internet, it’s also now feeding that algorithm and teaching it stuff about you. But I think that it also is something to consider when you are represented. Because if, let’s say, for example, your attorney gives you advice and you turn around and feed that very specific advice that’s fact-based and based on your case into consumer AI, then there’s likely no privilege attached to that anymore either. And so all of a sudden, the advice your attorney gave you is no longer a secret.

Sarah Preisinger [00:16:47]:
It’s no longer a strategy you can hold to yourself.

David Crum [00:16:50]:
The lesson is you’re hiring an attorney for a reason.

Brooke Mathieu [00:16:53]:
Yes.

David Crum [00:16:54]:
Get off, get off the AI.

Sarah Preisinger [00:16:55]:
Yes, absolutely. The only time I have seen a client effectively use AI was as we were preparing for trial. He asked AI to ask him the meanest questions an opposing divorce attorney could ask him in court.

David Crum [00:17:10]:
Oh my God. Okay.

Brooke Mathieu [00:17:12]:
Better to be prepared. Yeah. So Sarah, question for you. Do you see this, like people playing tricks? Is it more common with husbands or wives? Are you seeing it with both?

Sarah Preisinger [00:17:25]:
I would say I see it with both. And more than it’s a gender thing, I think it is about who has typically had control of the finances, who manages the day-to-day, who makes sure the bill— makes sure the bills are paid, who does their investing, all of that kind of stuff. And so there is often one partner who’s very, very in the dark. In cases I have had recently, I would say that it’s broken down more that husbands are putting things in somebody else’s name, and wives are opening accounts that aren’t attached to joint accounts and squirreling money away in there. But the end goal is the same for both, whether it’s men or women, but they see how to get there differently. I think both in whether it’s men or women are trying to protect as much as they can, because as people come into divorce, they’re starting to understand stuff is going to be split up, there’s going to be scarcity, there’s just going to be less of everything to go around. And so as much as they can tuck away for themselves, I think they’re really inclined to do that.

Brooke Mathieu [00:18:25]:
Could you give a couple specific examples of what you’re seeing men do versus what you’re seeing women do?

Sarah Preisinger [00:18:31]:
Yeah, absolutely. So I have a case right now where the soon-to-be ex-husband, who is our opposing party, has moved a ton of money and assets into his present girlfriend’s name, including like refinanced his motorcycle so that it’s in her name, all of that kind of stuff. Unfortunately, he did so leaving a paper trail so wide that it’s not been very difficult to follow. And I also have a case where the wife is on the other side, and she has been diverting money from her paycheck into a separate account. And so my client noticed it about 8 months ago, which is about 3 months before the filing. Um, they had had a joint account. Everything had already always been deposited in there. And then suddenly he notices it’s less and less that’s being deposited.

Sarah Preisinger [00:19:24]:
And as we did discovery, it turns out she’d been funneling that to another account and trying to claim that it’s no longer marital, but they are still legally married. So it is.

David Crum [00:19:34]:
So we talked a little bit about men versus women. What do you see, um, these things differently happening with rich, like people who are wealthy versus people who are not? who are poor, like, not as wealthy?

Sarah Preisinger [00:19:45]:
I think that it’s happening across all economic levels. I think the way it happens is different, and that’s partly just because of what people know how to do and what they have access to. So, I think the super wealthy drop money into, you know, offshore accounts or Swiss accounts. That is not a thing I know how to do, but that’s how they do it. People who are in other economic levels and don’t have access to things like that are dropping things either into cash or into resources that they think are gonna be really important. I’m also working a case right now where parties were apocalyptic preppers. And so, as part of that, they have diverted a lot of their resources into things like ammunition and body armor and MREs. So, it depends, I think, what is valuable to people and what’s available to them.

Sarah Preisinger [00:20:39]:
But regardless of economic status, I think there is a real inclination to try and gather as much as they can coming into that process.

Brooke Mathieu [00:20:47]:
That’s what I was gonna say. It sounds like people are just trying to get as much as they can out of this.

Sarah Preisinger [00:20:53]:
Absolutely. It’s like squirrels getting ready for winter.

David Crum [00:20:56]:
Well, this is what we’ve talked about in the past. It’s like when fear is the motivator behind behavior, and there’s a lot of fear in divorce, that’s when you see all these bad things come out. That’s where I think good people do bad things, you know, and sometimes it shocks me And speaking of that, I— so I’m imagining you like going through all these, these accounts, right? And looking at things. Are there times when like, you’re the first to know, you know, like, what in the world is this? And what, what have you found that just shocks you that people are spending money on that their spouse doesn’t know about?

Sarah Preisinger [00:21:35]:
Yeah, I am sometimes really surprised. You know, I’ll get a big old stack of bank records in discovery. And it’s pretty clear to me that opposing counsel didn’t look at them before they sent them to me. I recently had a case where I’m looking at opposing party’s bank records, and I see that there’s a lot of money leaving the account going to an inmate in a Texas prison.

Brooke Mathieu [00:21:56]:
What?

Sarah Preisinger [00:21:56]:
And a bunch of money going to psychics who I can only presume were driving her towards this inmate in the Texas prison.

Brooke Mathieu [00:22:03]:
This relationship will work out for you.

Sarah Preisinger [00:22:05]:
Oh my God.

David Crum [00:22:06]:
Oh my God. Now look at this. Look at Brooke’s face light up. Her face is lighting up.

Brooke Mathieu [00:22:11]:
Why?

David Crum [00:22:11]:
Because I know what you watch, Brooke. Tell us, tell us what you watch.

Brooke Mathieu [00:22:14]:
Because one of my guilty pleasure shows is Love After Lockup. And so yeah, there’s a lot of men and women writing to inmates and starting relationships and sending them money, like lots of money. And the inmates are doing it to multiple people. Basically, they have all the time in the world and they’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear. And they’re just looking for who’s gonna give them funds to take care of them in prison and then get them started outside of prison. I even saw one guy, he drained his entire 401 on this inmate who had another boyfriend the whole time, and she was like physically abusive to him. He loved it. Loved it.

Sarah Preisinger [00:23:04]:
Yeah. Well, this case, she was sending between $500 and $1,500 a month to this inmate.

David Crum [00:23:10]:
$1,500 a month.

Brooke Mathieu [00:23:11]:
Imagine how many people are doing that.

David Crum [00:23:14]:
Where does the money go? Who controls it?

Brooke Mathieu [00:23:16]:
Commissary, drugs, paying people off.

David Crum [00:23:21]:
But how do they get the money?

Sarah Preisinger [00:23:23]:
You can put money on an inmate’s books, and that’s essentially what— Like their little bank account. Yeah, including the state of Texas has essentially an option where you can just go in online and do a credit card transaction and put money on this person’s books.

David Crum [00:23:37]:
Yeah, but I always thought money on the books was like money toward commissary and stuff like that. That can’t be the case because, what, $1,500? How much commissary you can buy for $1,500 a month? That’s a lot of bags of chips. That’s a lot of bags of chips.

Sarah Preisinger [00:23:53]:
I think there’s usually a limit to how much they can access while they’re still in custody, uh, but then once they ultimately get released, then they get the rest of it. It just gets cut to them as a check, is my understanding.

David Crum [00:24:05]:
So Brooke, what was it you were talking about? Somebody who made like hundreds of thousands of dollars doing this?

Brooke Mathieu [00:24:10]:
There was one girl, she was in prison over the course of like, it was like 7 or 8 years. And she made over $800,000 from tricks is what they’re called. Yeah, tricks, sending her money. That sounds like a great business model.

David Crum [00:24:29]:
I think there’s 2 takeaways from there. Number one, like, do not do this. Like, An inmate does not love you, right? For the most part. Maybe, maybe. And maybe there could be a chance that you found true love, but probably not. Number 2, like, this is like a great business opportunity. You just get arrested, you go to jail, they pay all your overhead.

Sarah Preisinger [00:24:48]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:24:48]:
So you have no business overhead. And then you just raise all this money through— I guess they have phones and access to— there’s a website.

Brooke Mathieu [00:24:56]:
There’s a website. I’m pretty sure it’s called I don’t know what it’s called. Something like writeaninmate.com. There’s probably more than just that one, but there’s websites where you can scroll through. There’s pictures of them. So they’ll usually pick whoever they think’s the most attractive and then write to them.

Sarah Preisinger [00:25:14]:
Yeah.

Brooke Mathieu [00:25:14]:
They’re like, I just wanted to do something nice. Just wanted to reach out to my community. You know what you’re doing.

Sarah Preisinger [00:25:21]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:25:21]:
Starts as a pen pal and turns into so much more.

Sarah Preisinger [00:25:24]:
Just download it, ADL.

Brooke Mathieu [00:25:25]:
So what do we do with this?

David Crum [00:25:25]:
So what about this money? Is this money gone in the relationship, in the marital estate?

Sarah Preisinger [00:25:32]:
Well, and in this case, it was really an argument about when and how much had happened, because some of it had happened before they actually separated and split up. And that, I think, takes us back to dissipation, and we’re talking about, okay, well, that was not for a marital purpose. You know, send it to this guy doing life in Texas. So, again, that gets accounted for in kind of the final math. But it also— that’s an argument that for me doesn’t hold up a lot of water. It doesn’t hold a lot of water for a judge if somebody says, well, I can’t pay the mortgage, or I can’t pay, you know, these amounts I was ordered to pay on our debt because I sent it, you know, to death row. Like, that’s—

Brooke Mathieu [00:26:11]:
That’s crazy. You’re just sending it to someone that you’ll never, like, have any contact with, essentially.

David Crum [00:26:19]:
I would get— you could get that money back. I’d get that money back. Sarah gets that money back. You know you do.

Brooke Mathieu [00:26:24]:
Can you get that money back?

Sarah Preisinger [00:26:25]:
Well, I was gonna say, you essentially take it out of the person somewhere else, kind of for lack of a better word. I think it, you know, for the, the inmate, I think it remains a win-win.

David Crum [00:26:33]:
But yeah, the inmate, that’s not coming back.

Sarah Preisinger [00:26:36]:
Yeah, but for the person who sent it, like, they’re still on the hook for, you know, if you sent this portion of marital funds to somebody else, whether they’re in custody or not, like, that’s a, a conversation and money to chase back and say, nope, we’re taking this. Absolutely. Also, stop doing it.

David Crum [00:26:55]:
Please. Yeah. Um, Sarah, can you put your, uh, CSED hat, your child support enforcement hat on for me for a second? There you go. Put it on. I want to hear a little bit about some of the bigger, you know, like numbers that you’ve seen. But, but more importantly, I also want to hear like, how do, how do people get that child support when it’s, when people just refuse to pay? You know? Are you able to do it? How do you do it? How did you do it when you were, when you were an enforcement officer?

Sarah Preisinger [00:27:23]:
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, there are always some really extreme cases. I worked a case for a while where the person who was ordered to pay had been in the NFL for a hot minute. And at the time that he was in the NFL, he had a couple of support orders set at a high amount based on what he was making, never went back to get them modified. So, so years later, by the time I turn up and I am working to enforce this order, he’s making $11 an hour detailing cars. And so getting that money back at this astronomical both amount and interest rate at that point was, was hard. But that guy is going to be paying through a wage garnishment the rest of his life. You know, every time he files a tax return and it gets intercepted, that’s going to try and chip away a tiny bit at that child support.

Sarah Preisinger [00:28:09]:
I also—

Brooke Mathieu [00:28:10]:
Because he didn’t go and get it adjusted once his—

Sarah Preisinger [00:28:13]:
Yeah. He was only in the NFL maybe 2 or 3 years, but, you know, kiddos by that point, by the time I got onto the case, were 17 and 18, I think. And so, it had just run at this really high amount forever. And he’d never gone back and said to anybody, hey, I actually don’t play professional sports anymore. Can somebody look at this? And so, there we were, trying to chip away at the quarter million dollars he owed, you know, $11 an hour at a time, which—

David Crum [00:28:42]:
Holy smokes.

Brooke Mathieu [00:28:43]:
He’s gonna be paying that forever.

David Crum [00:28:44]:
These NFL guys get paid. These NFL guys get hammered. I’ve seen this because, you know, what is the average— the average, like, career is like 2 years in the NFL.

Brooke Mathieu [00:28:53]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:28:53]:
So they sign a big contract for the first, like, year or 2, and then it’s over. And then they’re, they’re like— people just think, and then they go back to court and think they’re making all this money, and they’re not.

Sarah Preisinger [00:29:02]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:29:03]:
Um, but that’s a big takeaway from this. Like, you have got to file, um, a motion to modify because that’s when it starts, right?

Brooke Mathieu [00:29:10]:
Absolutely.

David Crum [00:29:10]:
That’s when the law Applies to it. But that’s on both sides too. So if you’re, if you’re the wage earner and you’re not, and you’re not earning, you gotta file. But also if you’re on the other side and you know that person’s making a lot more money, yeah, right, you got to file your motion to modify.

Sarah Preisinger [00:29:26]:
Absolutely. And, and your point is also really well taken that the clock starts on when the court can change that amount once something is filed, not, not once you know. So it’s one of those things that But, you know, this guy in particular, if he could go back in time 15 years, it would have made a huge difference. But to have ignored it for that long had it balloon into this huge amount that he was never going to be able to pay, frankly.

David Crum [00:29:51]:
So what are some of the other things that, that can be done to get back child support collected?

Sarah Preisinger [00:29:57]:
So things like intercepting tax returns. If you owe a bunch of back child support and you win the lottery, it is likely that somebody else will know that before you do, because they’re going to intercept that. also had a case where there was a guy working as a contractor in China, and passport revocation and suspension of renewal privileges is one of the things that can be in effect to enforce your child support obligation. This guy had been very, very clear with both the other parent and with our office that he had no intention of paying the $80,000 that he was supposed to pay in child support, uh, except then his passport and his visa came up for renewal. And the State Department was clear with him that you can either pay this amount or you can stay in China because we’re not renewing any of this. China kind of said, you’re about to be a person here with no home country. And lo and behold, guy coughed up the $80,000, paid it off.

Brooke Mathieu [00:30:55]:
It just came out of nowhere. Yeah. Yeah.

David Crum [00:30:59]:
That law has changed, hasn’t it? I mean, you don’t need to— it doesn’t— they don’t need to wait till it comes up for renewal, right? Can they just revoke your passport?

Sarah Preisinger [00:31:07]:
It depends on the exact circumstance, but in some circumstances they can. And they can also revoke your visa, um, which, you know, then if you find yourself in a country without the appropriate visa, then you’re subject to all kinds of scary law enforcement stuff that could happen to you there. Um, and it also is the policy of the State Department that once you’re in that situation, it’s not just you make a payment, get back in good graces. No, you have to pay it off before they will Reinstate your passport.

David Crum [00:31:34]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I remember people going, well, who cares if we revoke the passport? They don’t have any money anyway. But that’s bullshit, right? Because it’s— I don’t know how many people I’ve seen that can’t pay their child support, but they’ve got a little, little, uh, all-inclusive resort, uh, package down in Cancun, uh, and it’s like, nope. Yeah, nope, we’re gonna take your passport. And so that can be effective.

Sarah Preisinger [00:31:58]:
It can. The suspension of driver’s licenses is also something that they do, and that is astonishingly effective. Frankly, people are often more fired up about the loss of their driver’s license than they are about having a warrant out for their arrest, because it’s a real strike at somebody’s freedom. And so, you know, if—

Brooke Mathieu [00:32:15]:
I mean, you can’t even go get a cocktail. No!

Sarah Preisinger [00:32:19]:
You can’t go anywhere.

Brooke Mathieu [00:32:19]:
That’s probably why people are upset. Yeah, exactly.

David Crum [00:32:21]:
Can’t drive and get a cocktail. Right?

Sarah Preisinger [00:32:24]:
Yeah. But that is something— the suspension of driver’s licenses is something that is really, really effective as well.

David Crum [00:32:30]:
Yeah, yeah. I want to talk about another dirty trick that I used to see. And, you know, this is one where child support is, of course, based in most states on how often, how long you have the kid, like how often you have the kids, right?

Sarah Preisinger [00:32:48]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:32:48]:
What’s the percentage of time you have? So I would see people, it’s probably dudes doing this, Fighting for, like, fighting for their lives, like, for 50/50 custody. And then once they get it, they never take the kid. They don’t even take the kid. The mom’s just sitting there and she’s happy to have the kids. Or they take the kids and just give them to grandma.

Sarah Preisinger [00:33:10]:
Yep. They just outsource all of their childcare. Yeah.

David Crum [00:33:13]:
Yeah.

Brooke Mathieu [00:33:14]:
Yeah. Like, what’s the point then?

Sarah Preisinger [00:33:16]:
Well, you know, I had a conversation with a client recently, and she made a really interesting observation to me. She talked about how For her, 50/50 custody meant half the time with her, half the time with dad. And for dad, 50/50 custody means that the kid spends 50% of the time away from her. And in that case, it’s more like 35% with grandparents, 15% with dad.

David Crum [00:33:37]:
Ugh.

Sarah Preisinger [00:33:38]:
So like that perception, certainly, I think people want to leverage as much time as they can so they’re paying less in child support. And I pretty routinely will make the argument that you don’t get the benefit of exercising joint custody— of having joint custody on paper, I should say— not exercising it and paying less in support.

Brooke Mathieu [00:33:56]:
Because doesn’t— I mean, I thought with joint custody, correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding was that it was just like you get to see each other, like, you know, you’re kind of splitting the decision-making 50/50. You’re— and then, but not necessarily like the living part of it, so that whoever the child resides with with is who’s going to get more child support regardless of 50/50 custody. Is that not right?

Sarah Preisinger [00:34:23]:
So I think of custody as coming in sort of 2 flavors. There’s legal custody, which is that decision-making stuff, and then there’s physical custody, which is where kiddos put their heads to sleep at night. And when we talk about determining child support, it’s the physical custody that comes into play. And so if, let’s say, parents make the same amount of money, they evenly split their kiddos’ time then they’re essentially going to work out to not either of them paying the other child support. If one of them makes twice as much as the other and they split time evenly, probably the parent who makes more is going to pay some smaller amount of child support back to the other parent. But if you have a parent who only sees these kids, you know, 3 days out of every 14, then that’s not joint custody. That’s not a half-to-half timesharing arrangement. And so that’s a circumstance where that parent is going to be paying substantially more in child support because they aren’t also taking on the time with those kiddos and offsetting expenses that way.

Brooke Mathieu [00:35:20]:
That makes sense. Is joint— I know joint legal or joint legal custody, that’s when you make decisions, that’s pretty common to be 50/50. But physical custody, is that pretty common to be 50/50?

Sarah Preisinger [00:35:34]:
I would say that more and more judges are coming to cases with the approach of kiddos have 2 parents, they should have equal access to and equal time with those parents. But that does presume that, one, parents are safe for their kids to be with, and two, that parents are willing to do that. Because, David, to your point, we do sometimes see cases where somebody will just fight tooth and nail to get as much time on paper as they can with kiddos and then not take it because they just want the financial benefit and not to actually have to deal with kids. So one of the things— one of the ways I handle that is as we come into a final order, we’re going to look at how much time has this other parent actually been exercising. If that other parent is, you know, again, showing up for dinner twice every 2 weeks, that’s one thing. But if they’re actually taking kids and shouldering those parenting responsibilities half the time, then that— all those numbers look really different.

David Crum [00:36:27]:
Well, what was heartbreaking for me is that you’d have these 50/50 custodies, and the dad would never take the kid.

Sarah Preisinger [00:36:33]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:36:33]:
And the mom would never say anything because she was happy to have the kids. But like Brooke, the whole point of the child support is assuming that half the time the person is picking up those expenses. So then mom is paying like 100% of the food and all of the other expenses, and it’s just really not fair. On the other hand, I’ve seen women who ask, um, I want him to exercise his visitation. Is there anything I can do? What do you— can you file a motion to make dad take the kids, or what can people do?

Sarah Preisinger [00:37:04]:
Yeah, I say, and it is really sad because Because you technically can file, for example, a contempt action and say, this other person’s not living up to the terms of the decree. They’re not taking kiddos when they’re supposed to, and I want to force them to actually exercise their parenting time. And a court could order that. But I think the hard thing there is, you know, the entry of a court order doesn’t make somebody a different person. And I think that does end up being really hurtful to kids who are like, why doesn’t this other parent parent want to take me. Um, and, and so I think actually enforcing that is really hard. And sometimes the route that parents choose to take when that other parent won’t take the parenting time is to say, okay, fine, then let’s have the order read that I have the kids most of the time, and you’re going to pay the appropriate amount of support based on that timesharing arrangement, not what you keep saying it is.

David Crum [00:37:55]:
Yeah, it’s a real heartbreaker. Yeah. What do you see, uh, moving kind of off of this topic? I wanted to talk a little bit about some other real-world problems that, that people watching might have, and that’s if you’ve got a spouse who is commission-based or receives bonuses or stock options. What do people need to be on the lookout, uh, when it comes to those sorts of things?

Sarah Preisinger [00:38:17]:
So one of the things that’s really important about that is consistency, and the other one is timing. So for purposes of consistency, you want to make sure that you are taking into account for example, the ebbs and flows of a natural business. If somebody works the kind of business where they’re going to make way more in a particular season, you want to make sure that you are reflecting a full year’s worth of that, or— and actually probably multiple years’ worth, not just their slow season or their busy season, but a really accurate picture of what they make as you annualize it out over the year. The other thing about timing is somebody, for example, might get a bonus based, for example, on the 2025 year calendar year performance, but it doesn’t get paid out till 2026. So you need to make sure that you’re checking pay stubs past the end of the year and past the end of the taxable year to make sure that you’re capturing all of the income that’s coming in. And you’re right, it’s commission, it’s overtime, it’s bonuses, all of those kinds of things. I had a case a couple of years ago where one of the issues, the performance bonus that came out, was based partly on the company-wide performance and partly on the individual’s performance. So seeing what those things were year to year was really important.

David Crum [00:39:33]:
Right, because they’re earned in that year that you’re getting divorced. And so it’s really— people need to be aware of anticipated bonuses. It’s like, when are you earning them? Not when are they getting paid out? When are you earning them? Where do all these accounts fit in, in your practice, like Venmo and Cash App? How are these things playing into divorces these days?

Sarah Preisinger [00:39:58]:
Well, we’re certainly seeing more and more of that. I’m also, in addition to those digital payments that people are making, often it’s for purchases, but also things among friends. Sometimes it’s dog sitting, all of that kind of stuff. So that can be a source of income that you have to consider as well. If somebody is getting a regular Venmo payment on something, you know, that you probably didn’t, you know, have $42 of drinks with this person, you know, once a week for a year, maybe, I guess, but more likely So obviously, that’s some sort of supplemental income or gig income to consider. The other thing, and this is sort of the opposite of that, to be more and more conscious of, I’m seeing things like Affirm and Klarna and Afterpay on bank statements. And so there are these debts that are being created and then spread out over time. So they look small, but the larger amount still exists and has to be considered when we talk about ultimate division.

Sarah Preisinger [00:40:52]:
accounts and assets and debts. I just handled a case where the opposing party has a lot of stuff on Affirm, so she’s paying it off in installations. And my client was ordered to pay some of the pre-separation ones, and opposing party took that upon herself to mean that she could just continue to put more and more stuff on Affirm, and my client would just continue to have to pay these Affirm payments into perpetuity. And once we caught caught that and pointed out to her, she was kind of like, oh, oh, I must have misunderstood what the language said. So, keeping track of that as well, whether it’s money that’s coming in or money that’s going out, those digital transactions are really important.

David Crum [00:41:36]:
Do people’s credit reports play a role in your, whatever you call it, your representation, your investigation of assets?

Sarah Preisinger [00:41:43]:
Absolutely. That’s huge. I always advise clients that they should run a credit report on themselves so that we make sure there’s not a sneaky account out there that got opened and, you know—

David Crum [00:41:53]:
Boy, you really are. You really are just assuming the worst. She’s a detective.

Sarah Preisinger [00:41:58]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:41:58]:
So their own— so they run their own report?

Sarah Preisinger [00:42:01]:
Yeah. I want them to run their own report so that we know the full landscape of what’s out there. And sometimes really benign stuff turns up, you know, like they have an old JCPenney card, that store card that they forgot existed and they never closed it, something like that. But sometimes it’s, hey, I didn’t know that I had an account at this furniture store, or I didn’t know we had a Home Depot card. That kind of thing. I also, as part of discovery, I will routinely ask for the other party’s credit report for a lot of the same reasons. I want to see what else is out there. It also can really be helpful in determining what is a premarital debt and what’s a marital debt, particularly when it comes to things like I can tell the date on when a card was taken out or when a car loan was signed, things like that.

David Crum [00:42:46]:
Yeah. So really a credit report on the other— forcing the other person to get a credit report is what’s going to turn up a lot. a lot of those.

Sarah Preisinger [00:42:54]:
Absolutely.

David Crum [00:42:54]:
It’s hard to hide. You can’t really hide an account from that.

Sarah Preisinger [00:42:57]:
Yeah, I think— no, I mean, and I think if you do, the only way to really hide from that is to open something under someone else’s Social Security number. And if that’s something the opposing party is willing to do, then they have bigger problems than me. I think the feds are going to turn up and have some thoughts about that.

David Crum [00:43:14]:
I’ve got a question for you that really bothers me. Um, you know, so we have opposing counsels on these cases Right. They’re not dumb, I don’t think. Well, some of them are, but like, attorney, you know, attorneys are like handing this shit over and then acting as if like there’s nothing wrong with this, you know, like with a straight face. What is going on there? Are these people evil? Are they lying? Is there something else at play? How do, how do these attorneys represent people that are pulling all these shenanigans?

Sarah Preisinger [00:43:46]:
Well, so, you know, for example, the conversation I had around the money going to the Texas inmate was revealing for multiple reasons, because when I called opposing counsel, and I said, have you looked at these bank statements? She kind of said, well, not really. Are we missing some? And I said, oh, no, I have all of them, but there is something else we need to talk about. And it was brand-new information to her that this was going on. And so, I— for me, it’s a real lesson in how important it is to not only look at what comes to you, but look at what you send out. Because if you do, like, let’s say it had been my client who was, you know, funding a Texas death row inmate, like, that’s a conversation I’m gonna have with my client about why are you doing this? this. This is gonna come back to bite you in terms of finances in the divorce. And, you know, aside from the legal advice, like, here’s some free life advice: stop that immediately. Um, you know, so I think knowing your own client, asking the right questions both of your client and of the opposing party, uh, is really important.

Sarah Preisinger [00:44:45]:
And part of the way you know the right questions to ask the opposing party is by talking to your client and getting as much background and as much factual information as you Yeah, I have a theory.

David Crum [00:44:55]:
I think that attorneys purposely play dumb. I mean, yeah. And I think that this like, oh, I didn’t look at it. I’m not sure that that’s because they, they, oh, I just didn’t realize I should look at it. They don’t want to look at it. Right? They just send it. Here’s the shit. Here you go.

David Crum [00:45:11]:
You find it, you know, and they’re just hoping like you’re not going to find anything.

Brooke Mathieu [00:45:15]:
Mm-hmm.

David Crum [00:45:16]:
Because what are you gonna say? Like, oh, of course. Yeah, he’s writing a $2,000 check to an inmate.

Brooke Mathieu [00:45:21]:
Who doesn’t?

Sarah Preisinger [00:45:21]:
Right.

David Crum [00:45:22]:
You know, this is, this is typical stuff. Um, one another question I have has to do with wage withholding. Um, because that, that can happen in cases sometimes automatically, sometimes you have to ask the court. Um, how does that work exactly? And have you— does that work effectively?

Sarah Preisinger [00:45:38]:
So it usually is a really effective tool, and frankly, for both sides, whether you’re paying or receiving, because it’s structured so that not all of the monthly amount comes out of one check. It’ll be structured over the number of times a person is paid. a month. But you do also have to be careful. I had a case years ago where a small business, an employer, was taking the amounts out of his employee’s paycheck and then mailing it in on his own case, which came to light when the employee got a nasty letter saying, hey, you haven’t been paying your child support. He called and he said, what are you talking about? Here are my pay stubs. Look at all these amounts that have been withheld. And then coincidentally, exactly those same amounts were being applied to the employer’s case.

Sarah Preisinger [00:46:20]:
So once we unraveled that— That’s crazy.

Brooke Mathieu [00:46:23]:
It’s crazy, right?

Sarah Preisinger [00:46:24]:
And it, it also, as we pointed out to the employer, it’s just theft. Like, it’s—

David Crum [00:46:30]:
I have never heard that. I’ve never heard that in my life. Yeah, but what about when you’re the owner? Do they just— they send you your own wage withholding?

Sarah Preisinger [00:46:40]:
They will sometimes do that, uh, send it to you that way. And some employers of small businesses will actually send it as income withholding, and some of them just write a check once a month and submit it that way. way. So it just depends. But yeah, very few of them in my experience will steal, but at least one would.

David Crum [00:46:57]:
Well, Sarah, I gotta say, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. And as we kind of wrap up here, what, what’s the final advice you give to people? And I’m guessing, because I was gonna say, what’s the advice you give when you know you’re gonna go through with somebody who might be pulling some funny business? But I don’t, I don’t think that it’s always that clear, right?

Sarah Preisinger [00:47:17]:
Yeah.

Brooke Mathieu [00:47:18]:
What if you don’t know?

Sarah Preisinger [00:47:19]:
Yeah.

David Crum [00:47:19]:
Yeah.

Sarah Preisinger [00:47:20]:
I think that, you know, unfortunately, when it does come time to part ways, it can be really hard to attribute best intentions, especially financially, to the other party. And so I think making sure that you have as much information, as much documentation as you can, and that you are not then giving all of that information to ChatGPT is really important to have to know as much as you can. And to be able to substantiate as much as you can is all really important.

David Crum [00:47:49]:
Yeah. And I’d say don’t forget to get the other party’s credit report. That’s one I see attorneys overlooking. And you made that point today. I think that’s so important.

Sarah Preisinger [00:47:58]:
Critical. Yeah.

David Crum [00:48:00]:
Well, Sarah, thank you so much. I’d love to have you on again. Thanks everybody for watching. Keep your eyes open for upcoming episodes and we’ll see everybody soon. Thanks, Sarah.

Brooke Mathieu [00:48:09]:
Thanks, Sarah.

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