In a divorce case, an appellate court vacated the order of the trial court that erroneously charged the husband with over $4 million in unaccrued interest on marital assets that the husband fraudulently dissipated from the marital estate. This altered the equitable distribution, so the case was further remanded to the trial court to issue a new order in accordance with the appellate court’s opinion.

Both the husband and wife were accountants, but the wife left her job in 1990 to “tend to the children.” The husband purchased and operated various real estate entities during the marriage, and he created trusts for the parties’ children that ended up being valued at over $9 million. The wife claimed she did not know of the trusts until after the couple separated. She claimed that the transfers to the trust were fraudulent transfers, and the value of the trusts should be charged against the husband in the parties’ equitable distribution scheme. The husband claimed that he had told the wife of these trusts. The trial court deemed the husband’s transfers of assets to the trusts for the children to be fraudulent and void and thus chargeable against the husband in the equitable distribution. The court also charged the husband with $4 million of unaccrued interest, but the appellate court vacated this.

The case is Mohen v. Mohen, 2021 Pa. Super. Unpub. LEXIS 2560; 2021 WL 4281296 (Sept. 21, 2021). A case digest analysis and full court opinion are available on the BVLaw platform.