The significant difference the domestic lawyer faces are identifying and valuing the marital assets. In most cases, you value the car, home, retirement accounts, and divide it up. This is not so with high asset divorces.

For instance, if one party owns an interest in a closely-held business, it may be that upon a divorce filing, there is a mandatory corporate bylaw or term that requires the employee and/or owner of the corporation repurchase the stock for a fixed price; that is its value and the marital asset. This is because the company does not want a disgruntled ex-spouse obtaining the stock and interfering with the business. The divorce court has no jurisdiction over the business itself, only the shares of stock or the value if there is a mandatory sale upon divorce. In most cases, the value of this marital asset is the amount the company pays to reacquire the stock.

Another challenge for the divorce lawyer is valuing the family business. It may be that the business has little good will value but its continuing as an on-going endeavor is the reality of the situation. Good will is essentially the intrinsic value of a business that can be attributed to the name, the services it provides, and a number of other valuable items, that cannot be indexed to any given person. This is where a forensic account and business valuator come into play to help fairly value this type of marital assets. There may be many different companies to discover and conduct such analysis.

A final area of high assets divorces that cause attorneys and other professionals a great deal of stress in assessing a proper value is where the business is a cash business, tax returns have not been filed, or the accounting records are facially apparent to be inaccurate.

Ultimately, skilled domestic counsel who has handled a multi-million-dollar marital estate had encountered these problems. Rest assured the domestic bar handling such case is aware of the legal tool to employ to determine with precision the marital estate. The downside is locating experts to value the business and obtaining enough accounting information to piece together the entire marital estate. This usually just means more cost and a longer time to get the case to trial. Ciyou & Dixon, P.C. advocates have handled numerous high-assets divorce with a multitude of valuation challenge. When faced with a divorce that is complex because of the number of assets, bank account, and the like, chose your counsel wisely. Few domestic attorneys have experience with handling these types of case.

Indiana Court of Appeals Memorandum Decision Division of Family Farm

Indiana Court of Appeals Memorandum Decision on Business Holdings and Values

How Courts Decide Division Of High Asset Divorces?