Many California residents understand that obtaining a divorce can involve some tricky legal questions. While California law strives to make clear how divorce concepts work, such as property division, child custody and alimony, things can get confusing and fast. When a high asset divorce is involved, these issues often become even more troublesome.
A Los Angeles judge recently refused a request by the former Dodger’s CEO to dispose of a divorce decree granting her $131 million in settlement. Her argument is that her ex-husband misrepresented the value of the team at the time of the separation proceedings.
Specifically, the former CEO states that her former spouse’s asset valuation allegations left her short changed some $770 million. She argued that her ex-husband actually knew that true value of the team all through the proceedings but failed to disclose the information.
It is unclear from reports why the judge denied the request. Unfortunately, it is sometimes difficult to value such a massive asset like a baseball team. Thorough investigation into the team’s current, past and future value can help attempt to expose the true asset number, but not always. Sometimes spouses must rely on each other to be honest in exposing their assets, a requirement of truthfulness enforced by California law. Such a legal obligation is not always abided by, however, which can unfortunately result in unfair distributions of property.
As previous posts have indicated, California is a community property state. This means that marital property is divided evenly in the event of divorce unless the couple agrees otherwise. Determining the marital assets is sometimes dependent on disclosure of the spouses, which can be a tricky endeavor indeed.
Source: CBS Local, “Judge Denies Request To Toss McCourt Divorce Deal,” Sept. 9, 2013
