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They lie, hide and even spend extravagantly, all because they do not want their money to fall into the hands of their estranged spouses.

While many divorcing couples often resort to various creative tricks to prevent their assets from being shared, their efforts are usually in vain because it is hard to erase the paper trail of bank transfers and corporate transactions.

Indeed, some spouses go to the extent of hiring financial forensic sleuths to hunt down the assets of the errant parties and, once exposed, the court will rule that the stash be added to the pool for sharing.

Those found to have deliberately misled the court will usually face a penalty of sorts because the court can increase the share of the other spouse.

Here are three cases involving spouses who tried to reduce the matrimonial assets and how the High Court resolved the dispute.

A wealthy foreign businessman tried to stonewall a divorce proceeding by repeatedly defying the court’s orders to disclose his assets.

He simply refused to budge and was only willing to say he had only about $12,000 in his bank accounts. His antics were so outrageous that the judge expressed contempt for his behaviour, noting that it was “seemingly without equal” in Singapore courts.

The 39-year-old entrepreneur claimed that he was self-employed and earning just $7,500 a month but did not produce any documents to back this up, contending that he had not filed a tax return since 2020.

But it was his 38-year-old former wife who had the last laugh after she produced business registration data to show that the man had, at the very least, a $10 million stake in an overseas business.