When you think your spouse is hiding assets

Suspicion alone is hard to bring before a court. Start by keeping material that shows what moved and when.

• Write down the date and details of any unusual activity you saw. For example: 'September 3: our home listed for sale on a real estate app.'
• Take screenshots of the sale listing, messages with real estate agents, and records of large sums withdrawn from a joint account.
• Get a certified copy of the home's register from the Internet Registry Office (the court's online property register service) and check the owner and any mortgages.
• Make a list of the names of the banks, securities firms and insurers your spouse uses, their workplace and their vehicles.
• If you will apply for a provisional attachment, think ahead about how to raise the cash or surety bond premium to be provided as security.

• Secretly checking accounts using your spouse's digital certificate or password
• Telling your spouse in advance that you will apply for a provisional attachment (they may move more assets before you apply)
• Retaliating by moving your own assets into family members' names
• Secretly opening mail addressed to your spouse

A provisional attachment (가압류) is not a procedure for taking the assets but for freezing them in their current state until the judgment. To protect compensation for emotional distress (위자료) or property division (재산분할) to be settled in money, you file for provisional attachment; to receive a specific apartment, you file for an injunction against disposal (처분금지가처분). These can be filed with the family court even before a divorce lawsuit (Family Litigation Act (가사소송법) Article 63).

The application must show that you have a right to claim and that it will be hard to collect later unless the assets are frozen now. If you only state that the assets exist and cannot show a risk of disposal, it is unlikely to be granted, so concrete signs such as a sale listing matter. The court often orders you to provide security through a cash deposit or a surety bond, and once the case ends, you apply to get the security back.

After a provisional attachment is granted, if your spouse asks the court to order you to file the main lawsuit, you must file within the period the court sets, or the provisional attachment may be cancelled. If you have already filed for divorce mediation, that counts as filing the main case (Family Litigation Act Article 63(3)). If the home already has large senior mortgages, a provisional attachment may be of little practical value, so we check the register first.

Once the lawsuit begins, you can apply for an asset disclosure order (재산명시) requiring your spouse to submit a list of assets. Failing to submit without a valid reason or submitting a false list leads to an administrative fine of up to KRW 10 million (Family Litigation Act Articles 48-2 and 67-3).

If the list is not enough, you apply for an asset inquiry (재산조회) to check assets in your spouse's name with financial institutions and public agencies (Article 48-3 of the same Act). Deposit and withdrawal records at a specific bank are checked through an order to submit financial transaction information, and severance pay or pensions at the workplace through a fact inquiry (사실조회). The more specifically you identify which institution to ask about what, the more likely it is to be granted, so even writing down a single bank name helps.

Asset disclosure orders and asset inquiries can only be used while a divorce lawsuit or property division claim is pending in court. So if you know very little about your spouse's assets, these are often applied for at the same time as the complaint or mediation application.

If your spouse transferred assets to a parent or acquaintance knowing it would avoid property division, you can ask for that act to be revoked and the assets restored (Civil Act (민법) Article 839-3). This must be filed within 1 year of learning the grounds for revocation and within 5 years of the transfer, so be sure to write down the date you learned of the change in title.

If the title has not changed but money has been drained, you argue for that money to be included in the division calculation by showing when, where and how much went out. The more unusual the spending, such as money sent to an affair partner or large withdrawals just before the divorce, the more weight it carries.

At Jisan Law, we look at the material showing signs of disposal in the consultation and decide whether to file for provisional attachment first or together with the complaint or mediation application. During the lawsuit, we choose together which institutions and what scope to apply for in asset disclosure orders, asset inquiries and production orders.

The application for a provisional attachment must identify the specific assets, so the more accurate the register and account information, the faster the decision.

If your home is already listed for sale, let us know first through the chat on this page, even on a weekend.