Family Law

Dissipation of Marital Assets in Maryland | Guerami Law Firm

Published August 16, 2026 on familylawmd.com

When a Maryland marriage begins to fall apart, the money often starts moving before the divorce paperwork does. The joint savings account quietly empties. A credit card fills up with charges neither of you can explain. A spouse suddenly “loans” thousands to a sibling, or a car worth twenty thousand dollars gets “sold” to a friend for two. This has a name in Maryland law: dissipation of marital assets. The good news is that Maryland does not simply shrug when one spouse spends the marriage down to shrink what the other will receive. The hard truth is that the law puts the burden on you to prove it — and if you wait too long or handle it wrong, the money and the claim can both slip away. Here is the honest version, in plain language.

What Counts as Dissipation

Dissipation is a specific legal idea, not just spending you disapprove of. Maryland courts define it as using marital property for your own benefit, for a purpose unrelated to the marriage, at a time when the marriage is undergoing an irreconcilable breakdown — with the principal purpose of reducing the funds that would be divided in the divorce.

Read that carefully, because every piece of it matters. The spending has to be for a non-marital purpose. It has to happen once the marriage is genuinely breaking down. And the point of it has to be to shrink the marital pot. The classic examples: money spent on a girlfriend or boyfriend, gambling losses, cash withdrawals that vanish, hiding money in a relative’s account, or transferring property to a friend for far less than it is worth so it can be quietly handed back later.

What Is Not Dissipation

This is where people overreach and hurt their own case. Paying the mortgage is not dissipation. Ordinary household bills, groceries, reasonable living expenses, even hiring a divorce lawyer — these are normal, and courts will not punish them. The fact that your spouse spent money you wish they hadn’t does not make it dissipation. If you accuse your spouse of dissipating every ordinary expense, you lose credibility on the transfers that actually were improper. Aim at the real thing.

Why It Matters — The Money Does Not Just Vanish

Here is what gives the doctrine its teeth. When a court finds dissipation, it treats the dissipated money as if it still existed. The judge can count those dollars as marital property that is still on the table and fold them back into the calculation of the monetary award — the payment Maryland courts use under Family Law § 8-205 to balance the equities between spouses. In practical terms, your spouse does not get to burn through the savings and then divide the ashes. The court can act as though the money is still there to be shared.

But — and this is the part no one should miss — the judge does not do this on their own. Nobody at the courthouse audits your spouse’s spending for you. You have to raise dissipation, and you have to prove it.

Your spouse does not get to spend the marriage down to nothing and then split what is left — but only if you raise it and prove it.

The Burden Is on You

Maryland’s leading case on this is _Omayaka v. Omayaka_, decided by the state’s highest court in 2011. It lays out how the burden works, and it is not entirely in your favor.

You start with the burden of production: you have to put on a prima facie case — show that marital money existed, that it left, and point to where it appears to have gone. Once you do that, the burden of production shifts to your spouse. Now they have to come forward and explain that the spending was legitimate — a real bill, a real expense, money that went to the family.

But the ultimate burden of persuasion stays on you, and the standard is preponderance of the evidence — more likely than not. It is not “beyond a reasonable doubt,” and Maryland’s high court has made clear you do not have to clear some higher “clear and convincing” bar. Still, if at the end the judge cannot tell where the money went or whether it was improper, the court will not guess in your favor. Unproven dissipation is the same as no dissipation.

Timing — The Breakdown of the Marriage

The timing element trips people up. Spending long before the marriage was in trouble is usually just spending. Dissipation is tied to the period when the marriage is coming apart — when a spouse has reason to see the divorce coming and starts moving money to keep it out of reach. That is why documenting the timeline matters so much. When did the trouble start? When did the transfers begin? A pattern of withdrawals that lines up with the breakdown of the marriage is far more persuasive than a single suspicious charge with no context.

How You Actually Prove It — Discovery

Dissipation cases are won with records, not with accusations. The tools are the ordinary machinery of a Maryland divorce, and they are powerful when used well: interrogatories (written questions your spouse must answer under oath), requests for production of documents (bank statements, credit card records, account histories), and depositions (questioning under oath, on the record). Subpoenas can reach records held by banks and other third parties. If your spouse hides or destroys records, that itself can hurt them — courts do not look kindly on a spouse who cannot or will not account for missing money.

What Changed Recently

If you searched this topic a year ago, the answer is essentially the same today — and that itself is worth knowing. Dissipation in Maryland is not written into a single statute you can point to. It is built from court decisions, anchored by _Omayaka_ and the cases before and after it, and Maryland courts continued to apply that same framework through 2025. No recent legislation rewrote the rules or created a new “dissipation statute.” The burden, the definition, and the remedy are the ones the courts have used for years. Be careful with online advice that overstates the standard — some sources claim you need “clear and convincing” proof, which is more than Maryland actually requires.

⚠ The Traps to Avoid

Do not wait to act. Every month that passes lets the trail go cold and the transfers get buried deeper.
Do not stay silent to “keep the peace.” Dissipation succeeds when the other spouse never raises it.
Do not drain the accounts yourself in response — you can become the one accused of dissipation.
Do not label ordinary bills as dissipation. Overreaching on normal expenses destroys your credibility on the real transfers.
Do not assume the court will find it for you. If you do not raise and prove it, it does not count.

★ The Path Forward

Gather the financial records now — bank statements, credit cards, withdrawal histories — before they are harder to obtain.
Build the timeline — connect the suspicious spending to the point when the marriage was breaking down.
Use discovery deliberately — interrogatories, document requests, depositions, and subpoenas are how hidden money is found.
Aim at genuine dissipation — the paramour, the sham transfer, the unexplained cash — not every purchase you dislike.
Work with a lawyer who will trace the money and argue the burden correctly, so dissipated dollars get counted back into the marital pot.

Dissipation cases are won on evidence, not outrage. The money your spouse spent may be gone, but your claim to its value is not — if you move in time and build the case the way Maryland law requires. This is not a form you download and fill out. It is a matter of tracing, timing, and proof, and it deserves someone who does this work for a living.

Talk with a Maryland family law attorney

Contact The Guerami Law Firm, LLC through FamilyLawMD.com for a confidential consultation with Amir Guerami and his team.