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=========================================================== If you are still married and haven't filed for divorce, any winnings from the lottery, any bonus from work is considered a marital asset. =========================================================== If you have any sudden windfalls like these, try to defer them or change their form. See if the bonus can be taken as a stock option, or if the lottery winnings can be taken as a long-term payout over a number of years. At least these approaches can make it problematical for her to grab your money. If you do not live in a "community property" state, filing seperately may preserve the seperate property status of the assets. This may be the thing to do in any case, as you would probably not save any money by filing jointly, it being that your incomes are in the same range. This kind of nonsense lays bare the utter bankruptcy and foolishness of "marital property" law in this day and age. How could your spouse logically have contributed anything to the lotto win, if the ticket were bought with seperate funds? How could she have contributed anything to your award of the bonus, if it was exclusively the result of your own hard work? "make everything as simple as possible--and no simpler." ...Albert Einstein |