Southlake Divorce Involving a Business Lawyer

Many factors can complicate the divorce process, including when one or both spouses are business owners. Ultimately, in this situation, the question will be who gets what and how do you equitably split the company’s value without killing it. The answer is often complex, and you want to ensure you receive all that you deserve in your divorce outcome.

If you are facing a divorce and one of you owns a business, reach out to the lawyers of Mims Ballew Hollingsworth | Family Law. We handle divorce cases involving complex assets, and we are ready to help you.

You Can Compromise

Your divorce and division of assets only have to be as stressful as you each want them to be. If you can find a way to be amicable when addressing divorce issues, it’s entirely possible to do so without destroying your business.

Further, if you can agree on how to handle the business split, your business and its financial records won’t have to become part of the divorce court public records. If you exchange all the information you have about the company, or both of you already have it, and then decide, there’s no reason for those records to come into court. You just present the final agreed-upon split to the court.

An experienced divorce lawyer can help negotiate with your spouse’s attorney to reach a compromise out of court whenever possible.

Choosing the Right Attorney

Although some divorces may do well with the famous pit bull attorney seeking a courtroom battle, that isn’t usually the preferred technique when trying to keep your business alive through the divorce process. If one party decides to be overly aggressive, an aggressive response is virtually the only possible result. Rather than spend time and money trying to kill one another, it’s more valuable to use the resources of our skilled divorce lawyers resources to negotiate the best settlement for both you and your business.

Collaborative Divorce May Be the Answer

Instead of both sides spending a lot of money on experts looking at and reporting on the same business issues, consider filing a collaborative divorce. Your assets and other valuations will stay private and shared only between you. You spend less money, and you don’t waste time worrying about whose expert is correct. Let our divorce attorneys present these issues to you and allow you to decide how to handle your business in your divorce – and not the court.

Considerations of the Court

Should the case require litigation regarding property division, the court’s instinct is often to award the business to the partner who ran it. But, if you both ran it, or who ran it isn’t clear, the court may want to award a share to each partner. However, that may not be the best idea if you both know you can no longer work together. In the end, the court will look at various factors when deciding how to handle your business as an asset for division:

• Did the business exist before the marriage, and the percentage owned by each spouse – if it predates your wedding, the court probably won’t consider all of it to be community property to be divided 50/50. However, if the business grew or the other spouse put a lot into the business since the marriage, that answer may change.
• How involved you were in running the business – did one of you do all the work or were you both putting in long hours running a joint enterprise?
• The value each personally brings, including professional qualifications and customer relationships – does one of you have special skills essential to the business? Do all the contacts come from one side?
• Did you borrow family funds for the business – the court will look at the money behind the company and who paid for what.
• Whether one spouse can buy out the other – can one of you afford to buy out the other, and does that one want to do so?
• How do you divide the remaining assets and liabilities – how is everything else split up?
• The ability of each spouse to earn a similar living without the business – if only one spouse gets the business, can the other still earn a comparable living?

Contact a High-Asset and Business Divorce Attorney Today

Our divorce attorneys at Mims Ballew Hollingsworth | Family Law can help you get through the process without experiencing financial devastation if you and your spouse are working on a divorce with a business involved. Whether you’re collaborating to resolve your divorce or fighting for every square inch of the property, we can help you get an equitable result. Contact us online or call 817-900-8330 to begin discussing your business divorce today.