**SPONSORED CONTENT BY DIVORCE INCORPORATED**
More divorces are filed at this time of year than any other. While refunds fuel this surge, it also creates a new issue of contentious litigation. The “marital” concept is hard for many to grasp. It is a stretch for many to admit that the couch is marital property. It takes a broader, open-minded thinker to see the electronically, digitized numerals in the bank account as marital, belonging to both wife and husband. This evolutionary thought is taken even more extreme when the account has risen a few thousand dollars after a deposit from the internal revenue service.
Income that is earned during a marriage is marital property. Therefore, tax refunds derived from that same income are marital. This is true whether you filed jointly or not. This is true whether the funds were deposited into an individual account or not. This is true whether you have shared a dime together during the marriage or not. This is true even if you have been separated physically from your spouse for years. In a divorce, marital assets are up for grabs.
During a divorce or while considering divorce, it helps to ask a tax professional what will increase the collective marital pot the most, filing jointly or individually. Attorneys, for the most part, are not tax professionals. Oftentimes, they are outright ignorant of tax law. However, your spouse’s divorce attorney will certainly be gunning for as big a chunk of your tax refund as possible.
By Daniel P. Bryant, Attorney at Law
Daniel P. Bryant is an attorney in the Clarksville offices DIVORCE INCORPORATED, Tennessee’s Family Law Firm. His primary areas of practice are divorce, family and juvenile law litigation. Attorney Bryant may be contacted at 931-896-2400 or dbryant@divorceincorp.com.