So I was wondering the other day on how a man could possible safeguard his assets in the event of a marriage breaking down.
From what I could research, India does not recognize the concept of a prenup, so you cannot enter into any form of a legal contract which would prohibit your wife from seeking up to 50% of your assets in the event of a divorce.
The whole transfer assets to your mom's name is also a kind of a grey area. From what I could find online, if the court has figured out that you transferred substantial assets few years before marriage to your mom or during marriage then the court could possible seize it.
To quote
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- Court Scrutiny: Indian courts follow a mandatory and comprehensive financial disclosure regime as per the Supreme Court's judgment in Rajnesh v. Neha. Both parties must file detailed affidavits of their income, assets, and liabilities, often for the past 3-5 years. The court will scrutinize any transfers made around the time of marital disputes.
- Adverse Inferences and Penalties: If the court finds that you intentionally hid or transferred assets to defraud your spouse, it can:
- Draw an adverse inference against you, potentially leading to a higher maintenance award for your spouse.
- Impose fines and penalties or initiate contempt of court proceedings, which can include jail time.
- Re-allocate assets, potentially granting a larger share of the remaining assets to the victimized spouse.
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I personally think that crypto is one of the few ways you can safeguard assets from a marital dispute and here's how that would work.
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Firstly, don't buy crypto from any registered crypto exchange in India like WazirX or CoinDCX, they all report your crypto purchases to the IT department and in the event of a court examination, it would be very visible that you own XYZ amount of crypto.
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You need to buy crypto from an offshore P2P exchange like Bitget, Bybit etc. These entities do not report your crypto purchases to any Indian authorities and there is effectively no record of you purchasing crypto via them. All P2P purchases will simply appear as expenses or money transfers to a third party on your bank statement and nothing else. You can claim they were paid to a friend for a trip or for a second hand scooter etc.
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Offshore crypto exchanges are themselves not very safe for holding crypto, so you need to buy a crypto wallet like Trezor etc. to store your crypto. Keep this offline crypto wallet secured with you and NEVER tell anyone about it. You can remove the trezor branding so it appears as a normal pendrive.
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Buy only bitcoin, any other crypto would possible lose value over time. If you want something which is cash like then you can consider buying USDT or USDC which are stablecoins and hold their value in the form of dollar. Every USDT/USDC can be sold for 1 dollar.
This is not a fool proof method and obviously, crypto as an asset is not very well received in most portfolios but if you want, you can just allocate 10-20% of your monthly income every month towards purchasing Bitcoin, USDT or USDC and keep it safe with yourself in the event of any future marital dispute.
People will FUD you saying bitcoin is a scam blah blah blah but a bigger scam is your FD of 50 lacs reducing to 25 lacs because your wife decided to divorce you for some guy in her office.
