By Jason Kohlmeyer, Family Law Attorney
Here is the short version. The day a Minnesota divorce summons is served, the law freezes most large moves on your joint accounts automatically. You cannot drain the account, hide money, or load up the joint card. You can still pay normal bills. So your real job is not to grab cash first. It is to document everything, keep ordinary expenses flowing, and separate your finances in an orderly way. Below is how I tell clients to actually do that, in order.
An automatic restraint kicks in. Under Minnesota Statutes section 518.091, the divorce summons itself contains a temporary restraining provision. It binds both spouses the instant the summons is served.
In plain terms, neither of you may dispose of assets except for the necessities of life, the normal generation of income, preserving assets, paying for a lawyer, or by written agreement. You also cannot cancel or change insurance coverage or beneficiaries.
This matters because people assume divorce is a race to the bank. It is not. If you empty a joint account the week you file, you are not being clever. You are violating a court order, and the judge will notice. I have watched that one move cost a client far more credibility than the money was worth.
Usually, no, not unilaterally. Closing a joint account on your own can bounce auto-payments, ding both credit scores, and look like exactly the kind of self-help the court frowns on.
There are two safer moves. First, you can ask the bank to require both signatures for withdrawals over a set amount. Many banks will do this on request. Second, you and your spouse can agree in writing to freeze or split the account. A written agreement is one of the express exceptions in the statute.
If you genuinely fear your spouse will clean out the account before the summons is served, talk to your lawyer about filing and serving quickly. Service is what triggers the protection. Until then, the account sits unprotected.
Start with a clear snapshot. Pull a statement for every joint account and screenshot the current balances on the day you decide to separate. This becomes your baseline if money later goes missing.
Next, redirect your own income. Open a checking account in your name alone at a different bank and route your paycheck there going forward. Your wages earned during the marriage are still marital, but you control the flow and avoid commingling new deposits.
Then keep the joint account funded for shared obligations only. Mortgage, car payments, utilities, insurance, and groceries should keep clearing. Stop discretionary spending from the joint account. If you move a large lump sum, do it by written agreement, not on impulse.
Finally, change your online banking password and your security questions. Couples often share logins. You are entitled to view the account, but you are not required to leave your spouse with standing access to your new individual account.
Joint credit cards are the part that quietly hurts people. The card issuer does not care about your divorce decree. If your name is on the account, the bank can pursue you for the full balance even if the judge ordered your spouse to pay it.
So take three steps early. Ask the issuer to freeze the account against new charges, which protects you from a spouse running up debt. Pay down or pay off the balance from marital funds if you can, because a zero balance is the cleanest split. Then open a card in your own name to start building independent credit.
Pull your credit report so you know every joint obligation that exists. You can get it free at AnnualCreditReport.com. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau explains why a divorce decree alone does not end your liability to a creditor on a joint account.
One caution from experience. Do not assume the decree ends your liability to the bank. If your spouse keeps a joint card and later defaults, you can refinance or close the account to fully cut the tie. Ordering payment is not the same as removing your name.
This is where the automatic restraint has teeth. If your spouse spends joint money unreasonably, your lawyer can ask the court for a temporary order to lock the accounts down. The court can also address the damage later in the property division.
Minnesota calls this dissipation. Under Minnesota Statutes section 518.58, subdivision 1a, if one spouse wastes marital assets in contemplation of divorce, the court can charge that waste back against their share.
A real example of how it plays out. If your spouse takes a fresh ten-thousand-dollar cash advance on a joint card to gamble during the divorce, the judge can assign that debt to them alone. The key is proof. Keep the statements, the receipts, and the dates. Documented dissipation gets remedied. Unprovable suspicion usually does not.
Minnesota is an equitable distribution state. That word equitable means fair, not automatically equal. The court divides marital property in a just and reasonable way, which often lands near 50/50 but does not have to.
A joint checking or savings account funded during the marriage is almost always marital property. The harder question is tracing. If you deposited an inheritance or pre-marriage savings into a joint account, that money may have become marital through commingling. Those claims are fact-heavy and worth raising with your attorney early.
Most divorcing couples in southern Minnesota resolve account division by agreement, then present it to the court. When they cannot agree, the case goes to a contested hearing. In the Fifth Judicial District, which covers Blue Earth County and the Mankato area, contested temporary relief and trial dates can sit weeks out on a crowded family calendar. That delay is a practical reason to protect accounts up front rather than waiting for a judge to do it for you. Olmsted County and Rochester fall in the Third Judicial District, where scheduling runs on its own timeline, so ask local counsel what to expect in your county.
You do not need to win a sprint to the bank. The summons already restrains the worst behavior on both sides. Your work is quieter and more durable. Document the balances, separate your income, keep shared bills current, and address any joint debt before it follows you out of the marriage.
About the author: Jason Kohlmeyer is a Minnesota family law attorney with over 25 years of experience and a partner at Kohlmeyer Hagen Law Office in Mankato and Rochester. He has practiced family law exclusively since 2010 and has handled hundreds of Family Law cases across southern Minnesota. He is the author of The Divorce Survival Guide: Getting Divorced in Minnesota and has spoken on family law topics for the American Bar Association, Minn. State Bar associations and American Trial Lawyers Association. He is a member of the Minnesota State Bar Association and has been recognized by Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers of America for many years.
