Colorado man throws away $500,000.00 in gold to prevent wife of 25 years from receiving the property in their divorce
Earl Ray Jones, a fifty-two year old Teller County resident told his wife’s attorney in a deposition recently that he converted the parties’$500,000.00 in retirement and investment accounts into gold bars and coins and then tossed the gold into a dumpster behind the weekly-rate hotel he was staying in. Apparently, Mr. Jones was so angry at his estranged wife that he converted all of their major assets into gold and threw it away just so that his wife would be devastated financially as a result of the divorce.
Now, unfortunately for Mr. Jones’s I do not believe his ‘strategy’ is going to work as seamlessly as he had hoped. This is because once a divorce action is served on a party in Colorado an automatic injunction is entered restraining either party for destroying marital property. Thus, Mr. Jones will likely be facing a contempt of court action from his wife. A contempt action is an action that asserts that a party has violated a court order, and as a result of that violation sanctions should be entered. Possible sanctions could include paying his wife $250,000.00 for her half of the asset that he destroyed, or even jail.
To learn more details about Mr. Jones and his pending divorce read The Gazette article here.
