Divorce and Business: Protect Your Assets with Washington, Dreyer and Associates

if you own a business and you’re going through a divorce there’s several things you should think about number one what happens to the business if you start a business before you’re married there’s certain things and certain protections that you can have to protect your business if you start your business before you’re married if you start your business after you’re married there are different set of protections that you may have those protections are different from if you start your business before you’re married it’s very important to understand that you may ask what am I referring to if you start a business before you married then you can value the business before you’re married and argue that that business valuation would continue to increase and so that the marital portion would be less than if the entire business was considered marital property and that’s very important that protects your business assets if you start a business after you’re married it can be argued that the entire business is the marital asset what does that mean the business could be split 50/50 it could be split 7030 it could be split 8020 it really depends on what a judge or a jury would determine but if the marriage does call for the business to be split up or if a judge does decide to split up the business then if one party wants to run the business and continue to own the business they would have to be evaluation done and terms put in the divorce decree as to how the other party the non active party in the business would be bought out those terms can be very very tricky so it’s best to make sure that you have someone who understands how to value a business and set up a buy sell agreement for that business so that the assets of the business are protected if you have a business that may be going through a divorce one of the things you want to think about is how you’re going to make sure that the business continues to run and operate one of the first things we ask for clients to do is to help us have an understanding of how your business operates by doing that we can help craft a solution that will allow for the business to still run while parties are getting divorced an example of how we may help craft the solution that will allow the business to still run is you may have a spouse who receives payment from the business that we would make sure that the spouse continue to receive the payment for the business but at the same time it would be an exchange for you being able to run the business without the involvement of your spouse particularly if your spouse has been a non-involved or non-active partner in the business now is not the time for them to become an active partner in the business when you’re going through a divorce businesses need stability and it’s our goal to help you have stability in your business because businesses are important assets that allow for parties to live the lives that they want to live one strategy that we use that we found helpful in making sure that business remain intact during and after a divorce it’s placing a valuation on the business and then using that to divide assets such that if the parties would have owned the business together and the person who is no longer your spouse would have had a 30% interest in the business and that 30% interest May equal a dollar we make sure that they get that dollar in an asset which is not the business and so working with us we hope to make sure that the business remains intact by getting it valued and then making sure that there are other assets that can replace what they don’t get from the business so if you’re about to split equity in the house instead of a 50/50 split what if you give 100% of the equity to the spouse so that they don’t have an interest in the business that’s just one of the ways which we try to work with making sure that businesses are left intact for owners to be able to run them after a divorce at Washington Dreyer we’re proud to have business litigators experienced business litigators in our firm which can help you make sure that your business is protected when going through a divorce