Hiding assets in divorce will cost you more than you think

_{Behzad Sharmin}

_{Head of Family Law, GigaLegal Solicitors}

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Across my years in family law, the cases that hurt clients the most are rarely the ones that go to trial. They are the ones where someone chose not to be honest and paid for it long after they thought everything was settled.

Divorce is already one of the most stressful experiences a person can go through. By the time we reach the financial stage, most clients just want it over. I understand that completely. But sometimes that desperation for closure quietly opens the door to something far more damaging, the temptation to shade the truth about what you have.

I want to talk about financial disclosure in divorce, because in my experience, it is the area where the most expensive mistakes are made. Not always out of dishonesty, sometimes out of misunderstanding, sometimes out of fear, but the consequences tend to be the same regardless of the intention behind them.

What disclosure actually means

When a couple separates, and financial matters need to be resolved, both parties are under a legal duty to provide full, frank, and clear disclosure of their financial position. That means everything: income, savings, property, pensions, business interests, debts, and assets you expect to receive in the future if there is a reasonable prospect of that happening.

This is not a box-ticking exercise. The court's ability to divide assets fairly depends entirely on having an accurate picture of what actually exists. When that picture is incomplete or distorted, any agreement reached on the back of it is built on unstable ground.

I often explain it to clients this way: the consent order you sign is only as solid as the information that went into it. A well-drafted order agreed between well-advised parties can last a lifetime. One reached with something hidden can unravel, sometimes years down the line.

The myths people believe about hiding assets

Over the years, I have heard a great deal of reasoning, from clients and sometimes from the other side, about why certain things do not need to be disclosed. A few come up again and again.

The first is the idea that if an asset is held in someone else's name, it does not count. It often does. The court looks at the reality of who benefits from and controls an asset, not just whose name is on the paperwork. Money moved to a parent, sibling, or friend shortly before proceedings can and does come under scrutiny.

The second myth is that inherited wealth or gifts from family are private matters that fall outside the scope of proceedings. This is not always the case, particularly if those assets are in play during or around the time of the divorce. Even anticipated gifts, money you know is coming to you, may need to be disclosed if there is a real and imminent prospect of receiving them.

The third, and perhaps most dangerous, is the belief that if the other side does not ask the right question, you are not obliged to volunteer the answer. That is simply wrong. The duty is proactive, not reactive. You cannot wait to be caught out and then argue that no one specifically asked.

What happens when the truth comes out later

The courts have long recognised that consent orders can be set aside where one party has materially misled the other. The threshold for what counts as "material" is not as high as people sometimes imagine. You do not need to have hidden millions. You need only to have withheld something that, had it been known, could reasonably have affected the outcome.

When an order is set aside, the parties are effectively sent back to the beginning of the financial proceedings. Everything has to be re-examined. The legal costs alone can be significant. The emotional cost, for both parties, is often even greater. And the person who withheld information faces not only the prospect of a worse outcome second time around, but potentially adverse findings about their conduct that follow them through the rest of the litigation.

In more serious cases, deliberate non-disclosure can amount to contempt of court. I do not raise this to alarm people, but because I think the gravity of it is not always understood when someone is sitting in the early, frightened stages of a separation and wondering what they can quietly set aside.

Case in point

This year's Court of Appeal decision in De La Sala & Anor v De La Sala & Ors [2026] EWCA Civ 282 offers a clear illustration. A consent order was set aside after it emerged that one party had been aware of substantial incoming financial gifts before the order was finalised but had not disclosed them. The court confirmed that deliberate non-disclosure sets a very high bar for the non-disclosing party to clear, and in this case, they could not clear it. It is a timely reminder that the courts take this seriously, and that the passage of time does not make concealed information go away.

The particular challenge of windfalls and family money

One area that genuinely catches people off guard is what to do when a significant financial change is on the horizon during proceedings. An inheritance from an elderly relative. A bonus that is expected but not yet confirmed. A gift from parents that has been discussed but not yet transferred. A business sale in progress.

My advice is always to raise these with your solicitor early and openly. Not because every anticipated windfall will automatically be shared, it very much depends on the circumstances, the timing, and the needs of both parties, but because the decision about how to treat it needs to be made properly, with legal advice, not avoided in the hope it never surfaces.

Family gifts in particular sit in an uncomplicated territory. Parents who help their children financially during a divorce often do so with the best of intentions, but the legal position around gifts and what can or cannot be recovered if things go wrong is genuinely complex. If you are a parent thinking about making a significant financial gesture during your child's divorce, please take independent legal advice first. Good intentions alone offer very limited legal protection.

If you suspect your spouse is hiding something

Everything I have said so far has largely been directed at the party that might be tempted to under-disclose. But there is another side to this conversation, the person who suspects their spouse is not being straight with them.

If you have a real reason to believe that assets are being hidden or misrepresented, there are legal tools available to you. Questionnaires, requests for documents, third-party disclosure orders, and, in some cases, forensic accountants can all help build a clearer picture. Suspicion alone is not enough to act on, but it is a starting point, and a good family law solicitor will help you work out what to do with it.

What I would caution against is allowing a sense of futility to take over. People sometimes feel that their spouse is too clever, or has too many ways to conceal things, and that there is no point trying. In my experience, money is harder to truly disappear than people think, especially in an era of digital records, bank data, and a court system that is increasingly sophisticated in how it approaches these investigations.

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