Woman, married for 20 years, thought she owned a house with her husband. When the divorce came, she found out about her husband’s alleged fraud
He kept an expensive secret from her for years.
Attorney Jacqueline Harounian (@ny_divorce_lawyer) from New York has handled divorce cases. But she called one case a “family law cautionary tale.” After 20 years of marriage, her client discovered her husband’s costly secret during the divorce.
“So, I have a family law cautionary tale, which really proves the point that it’s not just whether you can earn money and manage money. But it also has to do with the trust you have for a partner, and how that can really work against you,” Harounian told TikTok. She explained that her client for this case is a woman who has been married for 20 years and earns $200,000 a year.
Harounian described her client as “very savvy about money and her finances.” She’s the family breadwinner, and her husband allegedly earns only half of her income. Additionally, her client and her husband own a house together and have other investments.
“After 20 years of marriage, she tells me that she was completely blindsided by her husband’s financial secrets,” Harounian explained. They paid bills as a couple, and her client said he would pay the mortgage. Meanwhile, she agreed to pay for the utilities, insurance, car payments, childcare, summer camps, and more. All seemed well until her client uncovered her husband’s secrets.
Finding out about her husband’s expensive secret during divorce
“Guess what happened? There was a foreclosure notice put on her door, and then, before she could even process that, the following day, she got a certified mailing directly sent to her that she had to sign for. Her house was in foreclosure,” Harounian claimed. Her client was confused and assumed her husband had kept up with their mortgage payments. They kept separate bank accounts, but she trusted her husband enough to pay their dues. Divorces can be costly, and some can turn hostile because a third party is involved. However, in the case of Harounian’s client, infidelity wasn’t the secret she discovered during the divorce.
“It’s not just that the mortgage wasn’t paid for a few months. The mortgage hadn’t been paid in ten years. There were massive amounts of unpaid interest,” Harounian revealed. The interest rate, which was just 3% at the beginning, jumped to over 7%. Her client thought that the mortgage was almost paid off. Instead, Harounian said the opposite was true: the house was almost underwater. Her client asked her husband questions, and he allegedly admitted that he hadn’t paid the mortgage, lied to her, and covered it up by having the financial statements sent to his email.
No other way out
Harounian added that the husband also admitted that he had allegedly been using his paycheck for gambling. He had also been allegedly sending money to his parents, who lived out of the country. The attorney cited the possibility of the house being auctioned off because of the non-payments. Even though her client wasn’t a stay-at-home wife, unlike another woman whose husband abandoned her and their children with nothing, she still felt blindsided. Her client believed she already had everything she needed for retirement, and now she had to save her house from foreclosure.
“If you’re trusting someone with your finances, you still need to verify. Trust, but verify,” Harounian advised. She added that spouses should request a copy of their mortgage statement and understand what needs to be paid off. Because of the husband’s secret, Harounian said her client had to borrow against her retirement to pay off the delinquency while negotiating for a mortgage refinance.
“I mean, we’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars that should’ve been part of her home equity that is now gone,” Harounian said. Because of the case’s complexity, Harounian thinks it will be expensive to litigate. However, she is confident that because her client didn’t condone the wasteful spending, they could recoup some of her lost equity.
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