3 Big No-No's During A Nasty Divorce That Could Land You With Criminal Charges

If there is one civil matter that can get pretty ugly, it is a divorce. When two people vow to spend their lives together and things turn sour, emotions can be running pretty high and two parties involved don't always make rational decisions. If you are in the middle of a nasty divorce, there are more than a few reasons to step back from the situation and try to maintain your composure, one of the biggest being that some of your actions could lead you to criminal charges or hot water in divorce court. Here are a handful of actions you need to avoid during the divorce process no matter how heated the situation gets. 

Do not destroy your partner's belongings. 

You see it on television when two people end a relationship, and doing so may even be more tempting than anything, but destroying your soon-to-be ex's belongings during a divorce is a really bad idea. If your spouse can prove to the authorities that you took a match to, threw away, or otherwise mistreated their personal property, you could be facing criminal charges for destruction of property, or you could be facing a civil lawsuit to cover what you destroyed. 

Do not try to hide your joint funds or property. 

If you are afraid that your spouse is going to take the money you have in joint accounts, you may be tempted to close these accounts and tuck the money away somewhere where they cannot find it or get access to it. If you have a vehicle that is owned together or other personal property, you may also find yourself tempted to stow it away in an effort to protect the property as your own. The problem is, anything that is jointly owned in a marriage will have to be looked over by a judge to determine who is the rightful owner or how the property should be divided. Therefore, trying to stake claim to something that is not truly and 100% yours can be considered contempt of court in some situations. 

Do not threaten your significant other, over the phone or otherwise. 

It has been said that divorce can bring out the worst of people, but if you let the divorce and the dissolution of your relationship provoke you to making threats, you can still be facing criminal charges in the eyes of the law for terroristic threatening. You may truly not care what you say to the person you are divorcing, but it is not at all uncommon for threats proposed in anger to lead to some stick situations with the law.

For help navigating through a divorce, contact a firm like Madison Law Firm PLLC.

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