In Estate of Jon den Hollander, an interesting question arose regarding a court order restricting a separated spouse from dissipating marital assets. This order is often established to prevent the deprivation of one\u2019s spouse of equitable distribution. What if the separated husband dies before the divorce is finalized with a will directing his assets to those other than his spouse? Would that be considered, \u201cdissipating marital assets\u201d and therefore be in violation of the court order?<\/p>\n
Jon Hollender, who owned Hollander Greenhouses, L.L.C., had been separated from his wife Arlene for about two years when he died in 2009. The Court had previously issued a consent order that stated \u201cNeither party shall dissipate any marital assets\u201d when they were separated. Arlene sought a declaration invalidating provisions of Jon\u2019s will and testament, which bequeathed \u201cany marital assets\u201d to a trust for the benefit of his mother and sister, claiming that it violated the court order. The trial court accepted her argument. When the case reached the Appellate Court, however, the trial court\u2019s ruling was overturned. The Court\u2019s reason for upholding the will was that \u201cEquitable distribution is a statutory remedy that is not available on the death of a spouse,\u201d and is available only when a \u201cjudgment of divorce is entered.\u201d\u00a0 In other words, even if Jon\u2019s intent was in fact to divert the assets from Arlene it is irrelevant because the remedy of equitable distribution does not apply after death. For\u00a0a more detailed summary of the case, click here Estate of Jon Hollander<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Estate of Jon den Hollander, an interesting question arose regarding a court order restricting a separated spouse from dissipating marital assets. This order is often established to prevent the deprivation of one\u2019s spouse of equitable distribution. What if the separated husband dies before the divorce is finalized with a will directing his assets to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,5,6,27],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-diversion-of-assets","7":"category-divorce-forum","8":"category-estate-trusts-guardianships","9":"category-wills-probate","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/948\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ua-cpas.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}