When people are getting a divorce in West Virginia, sometimes they wonder if it’s possible to freeze someone’s assets. For example, one may be concerned that the soon to be former spouse is going to be sneaky with some or all of the money that’s involved in the case. What one can do sometimes is go to the court and they can get an ex parte relief if it is truly an emergency and one can establish this for the court. That means one can go to the court and can get relief from the court without the other person being present. Now, oftentimes it just requires one to simply file a motion. Sometimes they may require someone to actually have to go to court and present it.
That is an option one has sometimes in the event that they think the other person is going to take off with some money in order to never be seen again. Now, it’s a fairly technical thing that one has to do. It’s not something that’s particularly easy. Most people when they try are going to want to do it through an attorney. It is possible to be done without an attorney, but that’s just something that one needs to be thinking about. One just needs to literally go to the court if putting in the motion, state while one thinks they need some sort of emergency relief and then once done and approved, one can actually get the relief from the court.
Once they get approval from the court, one would receive a court order that clearly says that one is entitled to that money on a temporary basis or the court will simply tell the bank that the money has to be frozen in place. That’s something that the court will do. At that point, it will be impermissible for either one of the exes to actually withdraw the money from the bank. That is something that can be done in any event that is a through emergency. Now, if it seems like to the court that the spouse is just trying to get emergency relief to be annoying or oppressive, then what the court will do is issue potential sanctions against them.
When one is going this route, one needs to state in a very clear and concise way why seeking this from the court and it needs to be signed in front of a notary to make it official. This means it’s under oath the grounds for seeking this kind of relief. When one does get this notarized and is very clear in why they need this relief, that’s going to be a lot more strong when it’s being presented to the judge.
