
Divorce as a Business Owner
Dividing your property in a California divorce can be complicated even if you have relatively straightforward property and assets. As a community property state, the law requires spouses to divide all their shared community property as evenly as possible. But what happens when one spouse owns a business? Can that spouse keep the business, or will they have to divide it? Business interests are community property like anything else in a marriage. Consider the following: If you started the business during the marriage, the entire business would be community property. If you started the business before the marriage, any increase in value during the marriage would be community property. As you can imagine, this is not the simplest situation to address. If the entire business is community property, your spouse…