Crypto Doesn’t Come With A Paper Trail, But Florida Divorce Courts Still Want One
A stock portfolio shows up on a 1099. A house shows up on a property tax bill. Cryptocurrency, by design, doesn’t show up anywhere unless someone goes looking for it. That’s part of what made it appealing to early adopters, and it’s exactly what makes it complicated once a marriage starts to unwind.
Marital Property Doesn’t Care What Form It Takes
Florida treats cryptocurrency the same way it treats any other asset acquired during a marriage. Under Fla. Stat. § 61.075(6), assets picked up by either spouse during the marriage are generally presumed marital, whether that’s a retirement account, a car, or a wallet full of Bitcoin. The law doesn’t carve out an exception just because the asset lives on a blockchain instead of in a bank statement. If coins were purchased, mined, or received as compensation while the couple was married, they typically get pulled into the pool of assets subject to equitable distribution, meaning a fair division rather than an automatic fifty-fifty split.
Why Crypto Complicates an Already Complicated Process
Three things make digital currency trickier than a checking account.
- First, valuation swings hard. A coin worth eighteen thousand dollars on the date of filing might be worth eleven thousand, or twenty-six thousand, by the time a judge signs off. Courts have to pick a valuation date, and with an asset this volatile, that date can matter enormously.
- Second, ownership isn’t always obvious. Crypto can sit in a hardware wallet, a cold storage device, an exchange account under a different name, or even a paper wallet tucked in a drawer. Unlike a house or a car, there’s no county clerk keeping track of who owns what.
- Third, movement is easy to hide. Transfers between wallets don’t require a bank’s approval, and some platforms offer more privacy than a traditional brokerage ever could. That combination of easy movement and limited visibility means spouses sometimes have to bring in forensic accountants who know how to trace blockchain transactions back to their source.
What Judges Look At
When cryptocurrency becomes part of a Florida divorce, courts typically want to understand acquisition, growth, and use. When was it purchased, and with what funds? Did its value grow because of market movement alone, or because one spouse actively traded and managed it? Was it ever used for daily expenses, gifted, or converted into other assets? Those answers help determine not just whether the crypto counts as marital property, but how it factors into the overall division of the estate.
A Growing Issue in Central Florida
Cryptocurrency ownership has climbed steadily among Florida residents, and family courts across the state have had to adapt. A 2024 Federal Reserve survey on household economic well-being found that digital asset holdings have become common enough among U.S. adults that courts can no longer treat them as a rare curiosity in high-asset cases.
We’re Here to Help You Sort It Out
Digital assets add a layer of complexity to divorce that didn’t exist a decade ago, and every situation looks different depending on what was acquired, when, and how it’s documented. As Orland property division attorneys, we work with clients across Central Florida to make sense of complicated financial pictures, digital or otherwise. If cryptocurrency is part of your marital estate, we invite you to contact Greater Orlando Family Law so we can talk through your situation and what a fair path forward might look like.
Source:
flsenate.gov/laws/statutes/2023/61.075
