civil lawsuits, hiding your money

I've always wondered this...

Say you were in a car accident and the other driver is suing you. It's a silly lawsuit, you weren't at fault, but you believe they have the upper hand. The price is put at a few hundred grand, which is way above what you have in your savings. Oh No! So what in god's name is to stop you from going right to your bank and withdrawing everything you've got and hiding the cash in a safe place? I imagine that at a certain point the law has the ability to put a hold on your account so you can't access it, but this point has got to be at least weeks after the accident, after the claims have all been filed and the great judicial beurocracy decides to roll over and go through with it. Isn't this just common sense? Yet you NEVER hear of anyone doing it, which leads me to wonder if there's a reason I haven't though of.

Any thoughts?

 

It's illegal, and people do it all the time.

 

Why would it be illegal? If there is no hold on your account then why would it be illegal to withdraw money from it? It's your account!

 

its your house that's hard to hide

 

So u remortgage the house and send the money on holiday , or sell it to an offshore company ( that u happen to own).
Completely legal to do , cos the other side didnt bring an injunction.

Shouldnt the crash be covered by insurance anyway?

 

It's actually quite easy to hide money in your house. And since nothing you've done so far is illegal (until someone can show me why it might be) I don't see why you'd even need to hide it. You can leave it on your kitchen table. No search warrant could possibly be granted. And even if one was granted, put the cash in a box and bury it. Or leave it in a trusted friend's house. You can do a million and one things with it to keep it safe and secret.

Insurance is really more of a scam than anything else. It might cover the damage to the car but if there's an injury to another person involved they might not even help at all. The reason why I created this post is because I met a girl a few days ago who rear ended a woman (at 10 mph) and had to pay $20,000 out of her pocket off make-believe neck injuries that insurance would not cover. This happens all the time.

 

Enron did it with their 700+ subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands.

.

 

Concealing resources to avoid payment is fraud, and is covered by tort laws.

 

he's gotta be found at fault before he can actually conceal anything. before that finding, he's just moving money around

 

he said it's hard to hide your house, not hard to hide money in your house

 

Oh, that makes more sense. You can't hide your house, true. But as the other guy said, you remortage it and tell the fuckers to come and get the house.

Exactly

 

Yeah, in a lot of places, you lose a lawsuit and can't pay, the winning party is responsible for collecting the money, but if they decide to push for it, if you can't pay up, they'll repo all of your assets or throw you in jail to reimburse the state (who paid the money you hid). We already looked into all of this when we were considering suing after our wreck. But if the party at fault had insurance, then there's no grounds for a lawsuit. The party at fault can't sue anyway, it was their fault.

 

Fitzy, moving the money around before damages are ordered, in order to conceal it, would be intent of fraud. It may or may not be illegal, depending on local laws.

The concealed money, will be fraud, once the court has ordered it.

 

my birth father was apparently VERY successful in this endeavor, according to my mom. apparently he was SO GOOD that he can't remember where he put it.

 

It is easy to hide money and assets.

Fraud has to be proven in court. Proving intent is not an easy matter. They must have proof that you had assets in the first place to do anything.

Even if they can prove you had assets before there are still ways to cover your tracks legally.

If you hide your assets well enough no one will be able to prove anything.

Understanding things like paper trails and having reasons for doing certain things is necessary.

Anyone can do it.