How Can Business Owners Protect Their Business During Divorce?
If you own a business, you want to protect your assets, your investment and your achievements. When a business owner goes through a divorce, these additional considerations need special attention from knowledgeable legal counsel.
Law Office of Kristen L. Campbell, LLC, works with Ohio business owners in protecting their livelihoods. Attorney Campbell is an attentive family law attorney in Hamilton who assists business owners with family law issues. Ms. Campbell has been a mediator for over 10 years and a skilled divorce lawyer since 1998.
Call her office for a consultation about your divorce at 513-895-0030.
What Will Happen To My Business?
Several factors determine what will happen to your business or interest in a business when you divorce, including:
- Business initiation date — Whether or not your business will be considered in the divorce assets depends on whether you had the business before the marriage or if you started the business after you were married. This is similar to how marital property is deemed as being jointly owned. You can find out more about joint assets and marital property if you visit our FAQs page.
- Funding used for the business — If the money used to buy the interest in the business or the money used to start up your business came from both you and your spouse, that could deem the business a marital asset.
- Other individual contributions — Did your spouse put any work into the business? Examples of this may be working at the store or creating flyers for sales or other time and labor contributions made to the business.
- Business valuation — Valuation experts and accountants are often brought into the divorce process in order to equitably determine the value of assets such as a business.
If your business is determined to be marital property then a business valuation will be done to determine an equitable division of the asset. You may then offer to “buy out” the other spouse for their share of the business. This is similar to someone buying a spouse out of their share of a house.
Arrange A Consultation
Kristen L. Campbell provides an initial consultation to discuss your divorce case. Call her office in Hamilton to get your initial meeting at 513-895-0030. You can also email her firm using the convenient online contact form. We look forward to assisting you.