Friend's going through a divorce. Can they take half of his bitcoins?

my college buddy is now doing really well at his job. a few months back, he discovered his wife was cheating on him with a guy and it was all happening while he was taking care of their 5-year-old daughter. since then, he’s been pretty quiet and has converted most of his stuff into around 850 bitcoins. he just filed for divorce and now his ex's lawyer is saying he must have a lot more cash than he’s admitting to. the judge has ordered him to disclose all his assets so his ex can get half. can the court actually access his bitcoin wallet?

Not if he claimed he gambled it all away on satoshi dice?

Nobody can seize bitcoins! If the wife knows his bitcoin address or somehow knows how many he has, just send them to another address and say they were stolen.

If the judge finds out he's got a bitcoin wallet and he refuses to turn over the bitcoins, he can go to jail for contempt of court (and probably other things). If he doesn't want to do that there are probably ways he could establish plausible deniability with regards to holding those Bitcoins, but having a friend post the details of his situation on a public forum wouldn't be a good way to start.

I enjoyed this part.

Yes, in the US.  Particularly if there is a paper trail.  It is complete BS of course, but yes.  No man should get married without a prenup.

in all seriousness - how could they? i like his plan.

This looks like an interesting test case for the courts to figure out where they stand on this Pre-nup definitely the way to go

If he's in the US in a community property state, the court could order him to pay, and hold him in contempt if he doesn't.  They may be able to track down his BTC purchases, but would have a hard time verifying his current balance. If it's not a community property state, then wife is out of luck.  It's negotiation time until the divorce is settled. Just my opinion; I'm not a lawyer.

Actually, depending on what state he's in plausible deniability is not enough,. Some states will throw men in jail indefinitely on the mere suspicion they are hiding assets, with no particular burden of proof required.

They follow the money and see what he did with it.  If he'd mixed it at SR for example, that would be good because it could've been lost. They say he dissipated the assets.  They say, you are in contempt until you come up with $X. In short: She whores around.  She gets to get f&$@ed by some other guy,, he gets to get f$&@ed all over again by her in court.

Married guys should jump all over to the idea of bitcoins, it's another great use for cryptos. Wives these days aren't easy to control, not like the good old times, 19th century, oh well, technology comes to rescue. You guys should use 1) DNA analysis to find out who the real father is and now 2) use bitcoins to give a middle finger to an unfaithful wife in case of divorce. Attack and defense mechanisms parallel development, so to say. What other technological achievements progress can bring us? We can only dream and embrace them as they come. Stay tuned. In western societies there are less and less incentives for men to get married these days. But if you do, at least do it right, with the technology on your side.

Me too. Already I have close to 25% of all my assets in BTCs. And no one knows about it, except for two of my close friends. And about 65% of the net worth is in the form of real estate, which I had inherited. (In my country, in case of a divorce, property passed through inheritance is not affected). However, in this case he should have waited for a few more months (or 1-2 years). Unless he received the BTCs through peer-to-peer transaction involving hard cash, the prosecution can track the movement of money from his bank account to the account held by the BTC exchange. All of a sudden, in a relatively short duration (3 months), he has converted all his money to BTC... that will provoke some questions.

First I think it is crazy that a court can make you share your assets with your ex-wife. You guys have some crazy laws in your part of the planet. I hear Berlusconni has to pay millions of Euros every month to his ex-wife as "alimony". I just don't see what the justification is for something like that. But yeah your courts are strong and they will make your friend pay up. Bitcoins are considered money now and hiding assets there is no excuse. We learned that when the SEC charged pirate.

The United States is a bad country to be married in.

The laws are the same in almost all the countries... I am talking about US, Canada, EU nations, Russia & CIS, Australia & NZL, India and even China.

So his wife cheat and now he has to give her half of his net worth. And if he don't he can go to jail, and the court can have scrutiny on all of his fucking like. That's FUCKING SCARRY. America, what have you become?

Very bad. Always use a prenup - if her motives are pure, she won't object. If they are impure, it tells you something important before marriage. It isn't only the US either

True. If a woman is in love, the pre-nup won't be a slightest problem. If she's not, run, Forrest, run

In the UK prenuptial agreements guarantee nothing when it comes to divorce court, so it's even worse than the US.