When divorce becomes a business issue

Peter Carlson of the Washington Post is highly amused by Forbes’ latest cover story, which discusses the angry battles that ensue between spouses when it comes time to end the marriage.

Carlson wrote, “You’ve gotta love a magazine article that includes the phrase ‘siphoning bison,’ especially when the story is about the mean, rotten, evil things that married people do to each other during nasty divorce battles.

“I’m talking about the cover story of the new issue of Forbes. It’s called ‘Divorce Dirty Tricks,’ and if you really want to have some fun you should read it while lying in bed with your spouse and start ostentatiously underlining key passages with a red pen. An interesting conversation will inevitably follow.

“Forbes is a business magazine, so the article focuses on the financial shenanigans of divorcing, particularly the fine art of ‘asset shuffling,’ which means hiding money before your !!#&%*! spouse can snag half of it.

“‘The very wealthy have long used Liechtenstein or Cayman Island trusts to keep assets squirreled away out of the reach of enemy spouses,’ writes Richard C. Morais. ‘But asset-hiding in divorces is no longer exclusively a tycoon’s game. Not uncommon: husbands who give interest-free loans to their girlfriends or have their businesses hire their love interests at unreasonably high salaries. There was the fellow in Missouri who stopped paying the mortgage on a property he owned with his wife, let the bank seize it and then had his parents buy it back at the foreclosure sale.'”

Read more here. As for the siphoned bison, Carlson laments, the story doesn’t say what happened to them.