Legal Definitions - secrete

To secrete, in a legal sense, means to deliberately hide or covertly transfer assets or property with the specific intention of preventing their discovery by individuals or entities who have a legal right to them, such as creditors, government officials, or a spouse during divorce proceedings.

Here are some examples illustrating this term:

• Imagine a business owner facing significant debt and impending bankruptcy. Before filing for bankruptcy, they decide to move several expensive pieces of machinery from their company's warehouse to a remote, undisclosed storage unit rented under a different name. They then omit these assets from their official bankruptcy filings.

  This action constitutes secreting assets because the owner intentionally concealed valuable property to prevent creditors from finding it and using it to satisfy outstanding debts.

• Consider a couple going through a contentious divorce. One spouse, anticipating a large settlement claim, secretly transfers a substantial portion of their joint savings from a shared bank account into a newly opened, individual account in an offshore jurisdiction, without informing their spouse or their legal team.

  This is an act of secreting marital assets, as the spouse is deliberately hiding funds to avoid their equitable division during the divorce proceedings.

• An individual earns a significant amount of income from consulting work performed for foreign clients, which is paid directly into a series of undeclared bank accounts in different countries. They intentionally do not report this income to their national tax authority.

  In this scenario, the individual is secreting income and assets to evade tax obligations, thereby preventing government officials from discovering and assessing the taxable wealth.