Dissipation of marital assets: what counts and how to prove it

How far back can a dissipation claim go?

It depends on the state. Many states look at spending after the marriage began to break down, which means the date of the breakdown becomes its own argument. Others count back from the filing date.

Some states also set a hard limit. Illinois stops a claim at 5 years before the petition was filed, and Florida lets the court weigh spending in the 2 years before the petition and any time after it.

How does dissipation work in each state?

Illinois spells out the rules in its statute. Under 750 ILCS 5/503(d)(2), a spouse claiming dissipation has to give a notice of intent no later than 60 days before trial or 30 days after discovery (the formal exchange of records) closes, whichever is later. The notice has to name the date or period when the marriage began its irretrievable breakdown (the point it could no longer be saved), identify the property dissipated, and give the date or period when it happened.

On top of the 5-year cap, the statute sets a 3-year limit tied to when the claiming spouse knew or should have known of the spending. More on how Illinois handles the claim is in the guide to Illinois property division and dissipation.

Florida takes a different approach. Its equitable distribution statute, Fla. Stat. § 61.075(1)(i), lets the court weigh the intentional dissipation, waste, depletion or destruction of marital assets after the petition was filed or within 2 years before it. More is in the guide to Florida equitable distribution.

Texas calls it fraud on the community. Under Family Code section 7.009, the court works out how much the community estate was depleted, adds it back, and divides the larger total, and it can enter a money judgment against the spouse who did it. More is in the guide to Texas community property division.

New York lists "wasteful dissipation" among the factors in its equitable distribution law, and Pennsylvania lists "the contribution or dissipation of each party." More is in the guides to New York equitable distribution and Pennsylvania property division.

Do automatic restraining orders stop a spouse from spending money during divorce?

In some states, starting the case triggers an automatic order over the money: it binds the spouse who files right away and the other spouse once they are served. New York's automatic orders under Domestic Relations Law § 236(B)(2)(b) bar both spouses from selling, transferring, hiding or disposing of property without written consent or a court order, except in the usual course of business, for customary household expenses, or for reasonable attorney's fees in the case. More is in the guide to New York's automatic orders. California's summons carries similar standard orders.

Other states have no automatic order over money at all, and you would need to ask the court for one. Either way, the order only helps if someone can show it was broken, and that proof comes from the same statements a dissipation claim does.

How to prove dissipation of marital assets from bank statements

A dissipation claim is a list of transactions with a total at the bottom. In some states, Illinois among them, once you show the spending happened while the marriage was breaking down, your spouse has to account for it with clear and specific evidence of where the money went. Each line needs a date, an amount, who got the money, why it does not belong to the marriage, and the statement page it came from. Building it means going through every checking, savings and credit card statement for the period, plus any payment app records you can get.

The same method works outside a divorce. A bankruptcy trustee looking at a debtor's spending before filing, or a family member looking at what a caregiver spent from a parent's account (see elder financial abuse by family), builds the same kind of list.

What are examples of dissipation on a bank statement?

Statement text varies by bank, but lines like these (shown as illustrations) rarely belong to ordinary family life:

• Hotels and travel. "MARRIOTT DOWNTOWN CHICAGO," "DELTA AIR 0062345678901," "AIRBNB * HMXYZ12345," especially on dates your spouse was supposedly home or at work.

• Jewelry, flowers and gifts. A jeweler's charge in a month with no anniversary or birthday in your house.

• Restaurants and bars. A run of restaurant and bar charges on nights that do not line up with any family plans.

• Cash. "ATM WITHDRAWAL," "CASH WITHDRAWAL COUNTER," checks written to "Cash." Cash is described many ways, and how to trace cash withdrawals in bank statements covers all of them.

• Payments to one person. "ZELLE TO JORDAN LEE," "VENMO PAYMENT 1023456789," repeated to the same name.

• Gambling. "DRAFTKINGS," "FANDUEL SPORTSBOOK," a casino resort, or ATM withdrawals with a casino's name in the location.

• A new card. A credit card payment to a card you have never seen, or a new authorized user on an existing card.

How to compare spending before and after the marriage broke down

One hotel charge proves very little. What a judge finds useful is the change. Pick a stretch of months before the trouble started and work out what the household normally spent in each category, then compare the months after.

The baseline is the same figure a financial affidavit asks for, and how to calculate monthly expenses for a financial affidavit walks through building it from 12 months of statements. In an illustrative case, the comparison might look like this:

Groceries stayed flat while hotels, Zelle payments to one person and sportsbook deposits jumped, and those are the lines to list. The restaurant jump is weaker, since a spouse living alone eats out more, so expect a fight over it.

How to total dissipation by category and by person

Once the lines are picked out, give two totals. The first is by category: hotels, travel, gambling, cash, gifts. The second is by person: every payment to the same recipient added up, across every account and every payment app. A judge who sees $15,000 sent by Zelle to one person over ten months understands the problem without needing the story.

Keep transfers between your own accounts out of both totals. Money that moves from joint checking to joint savings is still marital money, and counting it as spending will cost you credibility when the other side points it out.

How to make a dissipation schedule hold up in court

Your spouse's lawyer will challenge the list one line at a time. A schedule where every transaction carries the bank's original wording and the statement page it appears on can be checked by anyone in a minute. A schedule built from memory or a cleaned-up spreadsheet invites the argument that the numbers were made up.

A few lines of a schedule might look like this:

What to do if your spouse is spending all the money during a divorce

Save a copy of every statement you can get now, since online access to a joint account can disappear. Write down the date the marriage started to break down and why, because that date may matter later. Then build the list instead of guessing at totals. In states without an automatic order, you can ask the court for a temporary order that limits spending or freezes certain accounts.

If you have no statements for an account, the transfers in the accounts you do have often point to it. You can subpoena the bank for the rest, with or without a lawyer; in most courts the clerk issues the subpoena and the self-help center has the form.

What should a family law attorney include in a dissipation claim?

Judges want a schedule they can check, and the Illinois notice rules make a good checklist even in states with no notice rule:

• The breakdown date, with the facts that put it there (a move-out, a filing, a disclosed affair, a separate bank account).

• The dissipation period, from the breakdown date to filing or trial, kept inside any statutory lookback.

• Each transaction, with the date, amount, payee, account, original statement description and page reference.

• The baseline, showing what the same categories averaged before the breakdown, so the court sees the change instead of a raw total.

• Totals by category and by recipient, with internal transfers removed.

• The explanation offered so far, if any, and why the records do not support it.

Expect the other side to argue that some lines were living expenses or were known and agreed to. Pulling those out yourself before trial shrinks the total and makes what is left much harder to attack. In Illinois, file the notice on time: a strong schedule that misses the 503(d)(2) deadline can be shut out.

Can software find dissipation of marital assets in bank statements?

Yes, it can build most of the schedule for you. CounselPro turns bank and credit card statements into one table of transactions, each with the bank's original description and a category, and turns check images into their own list. You can search the exact words the bank printed, like "ZELLE TO" or "DRAFTKINGS," see the top merchants, and click any transaction to open the statement page it came from. Export the list to Excel or CSV for the schedule.

On Plus, Premier and the Single Project, you can ask Daystrom, the AI analyst inside CounselPro, to trace money to named recipients and compare spending across periods. The AI forensic report on those plans has an asset tracing section that looks for dissipation patterns. Your first 50 pages are free, which covers several months of the account you are most worried about.