In many cases, your divorce is not going to have anything to do with your business. You may simply own a business that you started by yourself, or with another business partner, and your spouse has no part of it. If you are worried about having to give up some of the equity in a growing business, maybe you set up a prenuptial agreement to prevent that.
However, many businesses are run by married couples. If you and your spouse were the ones to start the business together, then your divorce is going to have a major impact on it. Here are a few of your options moving forward.
Change nothing
First of all, always remember that you don’t have to make any business changes just because you get divorced. You can both remain as owners. You can continue working together. You can simply divide the assets that you want personally and keep the business jointly. Now, some couples won’t be able to do this because it’s too difficult for them to work so closely together, but this is an easy solution if you think you can do it.
Selling the business
Another option is to sell the business because this converts the full value of that asset into cash. You and your spouse can then split up the cash and start new businesses if you’d like, or go your separate ways in the divorce. The downside of this, of course, is that you lose the business that you’d worked to build up, which is something many owners do not want.
Buying their share
Finally, if you want to keep the business but your partner doesn’t want to work with you and just wants to get their money out of it, you can buy their share of the company. People sometimes do this using marital assets, by getting a business loan or in some other fashion. This allows you to continue running the business, but it also gives your spouse a clean break and the financial support they were looking for.
No matter what you decide to do, be sure you know what legal steps to take.