One day Dick comes home and says “Honey! Honey! I just won $1 billion in the lottery! Pack your suitcases!”
“That’s fantastic news, Dick! Where am I going?”
“I don’t care. Just get the fuck out!”
Seems Dick filed for divorce right after he found out he won the lottery.
But Dick forgot that she would be entitled to at least half the prize as they were married when he won the lottery,
Dick had made copies of the ticket for his attorney and financial advisor. He showed the ticket to his friends. And of course there is the video at the gas station showing the exact time and date Dick bought the ticket with clear video of him buying it.
But Dick says “screw that bitch” and burns the ticket. Even holds a ticket burning party where he burns the identified winning ticket on camera and in front of witnesses. There is no question Dick had the winning ticket and destroyed it.
So what happens during divorce proceedings? Does Dick owe Jane $500 million?
The answer is going to depend on the laws in force in the jurisdiction in which Dick and Jane’s divorce is litigated, obviously.
Plus, there’ll be a preliminary issue to be litigated; does Dick’s action in burning the ticket without making any claim to the prize mean that Dick’s right to the prize is conclusively extinguished? The answer to that one is going to depend on the laws that govern the lottery. But let’s assume that yes, it does, because the question is no fun if it doesn’t.
In jurisdictions with which I am familiar, a court making financial and property orders on divorce is dealing with the assets that the spouses actually have, not the assets which they could have had or would have had if one or other or both of them had done things differently. All that’s available to be split is the actual assets.
But, the way in which those assets are split may well be affected by the conduct of the parties, including conduct amounting to deliberate impoverishment.
So, Dick might not owe Jane $500 million that he doesn’t have, but he might owe her considerably more than half of the assets that he does have.
While there is a legitimate factual question here, it could have been asked just as well without the misogynistic overtones. Please try to do better in the future.
The only value of the ticket was the 1 or 2 dollars he spent on it. The value would be after he turned the ticket in and claimed the money. He never turned the ticket in so he technically hadn’t won the lottery yet.
Wouldn’t the ticket itself be an asset? It clearly has a value, even if it’s just the purchase price, and it carries the right to claim the full prize.
If the court would look poorly on the husband burning other assets, like maybe he chops up all the furniture and burns it in the fireplace, I suspect they’d also look poorly on burning the ticket.
Yes, but the ticket establishes his right to claim the prize, and that has some economic value. There are people who will buy winning lottery tickets for up-front cash vs. the amortization payments the official lottery will give you. And there are other assets of a similar nature, like stock options. If you have the option to buy stock at a given price, that (potentially) has a value attached to it, which you could sell.
Also patent applications. Before the patent issues, it is less valuable, but the potential of the patent issuing means it has value, and they are bought and sold all the time.
I’m pretty sure the assets are valued at the market value, not at the value at which they were acquired. For example, if a spouse bought a share of Apple stock back when it was $1/share, it would be priced at the current value at the time of the divorce. It wouldn’t be considered as a $1 asset. The value would be whatever it could be sold for at that time. I would think the same thing would apply to a lottery ticket. Even though it was bought for $1, the market value would be whatever prize value it had.
I recall in the news a case from about the late 1980’s (?) where a MLB player was ordered to pay his wife half his salary (millyuns!). He instead took a sabbatical year so he would have no income. Judge said “Nice try, you could have earned this much money and chose not to, you still owe $X million for her half.”
I would assume th legal principle is - you two own this item jointly (house, lottery ticket, car). If you wreck her half, you still owe her the value of her half. A lottery ticket not burned, once identified as a winner, is obviously worth something - a lot of something. I can’t see it being shrugged off by the system.
(There was also a case back when, where a man got a letter addressed to his ex-wife offering to help her with investments. Turns out she won, divorced, collected, didn’t say. This was an investment firm doing cold calls from a list of lottery winners, and using by mistake an old address. By hiding her wealth during divorce hearings, she would now be penalized. In California law any hidden wealth is forfeit to the other spouse, instead of splitting 50-50.
Reading this and it is Florida law so YMMV, it is about the ticket and not the collection of the winnings.
If a winning lottery ticket is purchased prior to a divorce, it is considered marital property under Florida law. As such, the winnings are subject to equitable division rules that require all marital property to be split equitably, but not necessarily equally. Unlike community property states, the lottery winnings do not have to be split 50/50, but the likelihood is high that it will be a fairly equivalent split. The court will look at the total of other marital assets, liabilities, and how these are divided when determining how much of the lottery winnings should go to each spouse.
I imagine it would be like selling a car for $1 and giving your ex 50¢. The court would probably look at the value of the car at separation instead of the selling price so what is the value of the lottery ticket when he destroyed it?
The court would look very poorly on it, I imagine, but that wouldn’t change the fact that it was burnt. If burning the ticket is effective to extinguish the right to claim $1bn, there is now no right to claim $1bn and hence the court cannot apportion that asset between the parties. The court might signal its displeasure in the way it apportions other assets of the couple.
Yes, it’s clear she wouldn’t get any lottery money. But she’d get everything else, and probably have a lien on all his future earnings above a subsistence level.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding lottery law, but if Dick burns the physical ticket, I’m pretty sure he cannot collect the jackpot. Therefore he and his wife both get $0 from the lottery and the divorce proceeds as if there had been no lottery winnings at all.
Now, on the other hand, if the law does award him the jackpot because he sent copies to his lawyer (if that’s how it works,) then yes, he’d be on the hook for half a billion to his wife.
I’m not sure how the burning of the ticket changes the divorce situation either way.
He deliberately destroyed an asset that he knew was worth a lot of money. The money is gone, but the consequences remain. See the above posts about destroying other assets, and in particular, the one with the athlete who went out of his way to not earn money he would have otherwise earned.
It’s relevant that Dick has impoverished himself in order to deny his wife a share of the asset. The court will take into account, when splitting the assets, that the pool of assets has been deliberately reduced by one spouse in order to ensure there is less for the other spouse.
It would be different if Dick had lost the ticket, or burned it by accident, or whatever.
Because property division in a divorce is usually supposed to be equitable, not equal and a judge may very well decide that it’s fair for all the marital assets to go to the wife since he destroyed the winning ticket (and gave up his share) just to keep her from sharing in the winnings.