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English or Spanish
Call us if you are going through a divorce involving a large marital estate with complex family law support needed.
In addition to representing individuals in wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases, The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary also focuses a portion of its practice on representing high net worth individuals in:
The firm represents clients from Florida, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean islands and regularly assists clients who speak Spanish. We represent men, women, and children from our offices in Miami, Florida.
Sean works with financial professionals, including forensic accountants and investigators, to uncover the evidence, including but not limited to concealed assets. Sean seeks to protect your legal rights and financial interests. He understands how stressful these matters are for you and your loved ones and strives to provide clients with guidance and personal attention to navigate complex and challenging family disputes. The nuances of such divorce cases include:
At The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary, we are committed to careful preparation and a good outcome in your high net worth divorce, whether through negotiation, mediation, or trial, if required.
Alternative dispute resolution approaches may settle the points of disagreement for those involved and provide additional benefits, such as:
Despite our best attempts to keep the expense of a contentious divorce low, the nature of the difficulties in a divorce, as well as the other spouse's lack of cooperation, can make an amicable conclusion impossible. However, we have the resources and knowledge to advocate your interests in court when complicated asset and debt division disputes arise.
Divorce proceedings involving high net worth individuals in Florida frequently pose several property-distribution difficulties. Divorcing spouses who cannot agree on distributing property must turn to the courts for assistance. A court must divide the property equitably or fairly under Florida's equitable distribution scheme. That may or may not imply an even split between the parties. Property division can be challenging for spouses who operate a business or have a variety of assets and sources of income. However, spouses can decide how they'll share their property in a prenuptial or postnuptial contract.
High net worth divorces frequently involve complex asset division cases. However, during the separation process, not all the assets that the parting spouses possess are subjected to division; only those acquired while they were married, which may include:
The court must first determine what property the couple owns before making a final determination on asset split. This act includes determining the fair market value of any business assets you own. It is a lengthy process that requires the court to weigh the value of a company's assets, predicted future earnings, and intangibles such as "goodwill" derived from trademarks, business ties, and organizational synergy. This evaluation often sparks controversy among experts, but it should essentially be based on the business's open market pricing.
The volume and complexity of property involved in a high-asset divorce require considerable effort and experience from attorneys who team up with other specialists to conduct all the necessary assessments. You may rely on our legal team's expertise to:
Knowing each spouse's assets and financial condition allows deciding whether or not they require alimony or child support, as well as their ability to pay it. When couples discuss these issues or a court settles them, all assets should be on the table. However, people can be dishonest at times.
Due to complicated strategies that may or may not be aimed at concealing the money from the other spouse or a court, a concealed asset is not easily recognized while examining accounting records and financial statements. They're usually liquid, like equities, bonds, or bank accounts, and they can be hidden by sending money to a friend, associate, or an offshore bank. A particular category of assets that have gained popularity in recent years and can be overly challenging to locate emerges in the form of virtual currency. Cryptocurrencies are a form of decentralized currency traded on virtual platforms and anonymously owned in most cases, which should be subjected to equitable distribution in a high net worth divorce. With the help of a skilled investigator, these assets are frequently discovered.
Before the marital property is divided in Florida's high-asset, multi-million dollar divorce, many factors must be carefully considered. We can assist you in the following ways:
You can count on The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary to be diligent and sensitive to all of your needs as we work to get the best possible results for you and your children. We can also provide expert guidance and representation on child custody (timesharing), child support, and alimony/spousal support matters. We understand that this is a critical moment for you.
Sean M. Cleary, high net worth divorce lawyer at the Miami-based The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary, has extensive experience representing high net worth individuals and can help you obtain a favorable outcome in your high asset divorce case.
When non-marital assets have been commingled with marital property, the high net worth divorce case becomes more challenging. For instance, one high net worth individual invested before the marriage in a significant number of stocks that paid him dividends at that time and during the marriage. From those dividends, he did not only purchase real estate, but he also used the spouse's money in doing so while depositing the subsequent earnings from that arrangement into a joint bank account.
Pursuing separate and community property proved to be a laborious task in this circumstance, as The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary had to determine how the assets were categorized and that the client's property was subject to a fair division.
In another case, the client, an athlete with a fortune estimated as high as $30 million, filed for divorce against his wife, with whom he hadn't signed a prenuptial agreement, so technically, she was entitled to half of his assets accumulated during their 15 year-long marriage - and probably more.
However, they agreed to an amicable separation, and the wife secured a settlement of $8.5 million, $1 million of which was in cash.
Our law firm represented the wife of a bank manager who insisted that an unfortunate past investment had left him bankrupt. Nevertheless, it was uncovered that he was hiding $4 million worth of assets in offshore accounts, which led to some of the money being retained for legitimate debts, and more than half of it to be paid to his parting spouse.
The owner of an IT company became our client when deciding to part from his spouse. One of the main issues in this particular high net worth divorce case was that while the company was initiated before the marriage, the wife also played a substantial part in its development.
Thus, the business could not have been considered separate property. The mutually gratifying outcome of this case led to the husband being awarded the company's ownership while his wife compensated with a proportional share of the marital assets.
In a different high net worth divorce case, the couple had quite a collection of unique items, such as rare wines and vintage jewelry pieces, along with some other antiques they had gathered throughout their travels around the world. While their assets were marital property, since they started together with this shared interest, the valuation and division process proved quite complex.
Initially, the parting spouses could not agree on the value of the pieces or how they should split them. Fortunately, following our determination and guidance, they had reached an agreement on how to divide the property between themselves without selling any item. The wife - our client - kept most of the jewelry pieces and some of the antiques, as she had no interest in the rare wines.
At The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary, we have successfully represented many clients and are familiar with the challenges that occur in high net worth and family law disputes. When we take on your case, we work directly with you to defend and safeguard your interests. This includes relying on our extensive experience and investigative capabilities to ensure that business holdings are accurately appraised and all assets are discovered. When the stakes are high and there is no room for error, it is critical to hire a skilled trial lawyer with a proven track record of success in complicated legal cases. The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary brings together many years of working with investigators and of trial experience and applies this to divorce and family law disputes.
Our approach brings a wealth of legal knowledge and experience to the table. Our ultimate goal is to assist you in retaining as much financial stability as possible once a relationship has ended. We also provide compassionate guidance and relentless advocacy to help you successfully settle related family concerns. We're committed to helping you achieve the best possible family outcomes through our:
If you are considering a divorce in the Miami region, call the divorce lawyer at The Law Offices of Sean M. Cleary.
