If you and your spouse are business owners, perhaps because you started a company after you’d gotten married, this could make things a bit more complicated if you decide to divorce. Your very business is now a shared asset that you both own, and you have to determine what you’re going to do with it.
This is also true with other major assets, like a family home, but a business is different because it’s also your source of income and it may be something that you’re very passionate about and you still want to be involved with. So what should you do?
You can continue running the business
Your first option is just to change nothing. If you and your ex are in a position where you can put your personal relationship aside and focus on your business relationship, then there’s nothing stopping you from continuing to own the company together after your divorce. This makes everything much easier in a legal sense, but you simply have to decide if it’s going to make your life much more difficult in a day-to-day sense.
You can buy your ex’s half
Another option is to buy the half of the business that your ex owns. You may be able to do this with money that you have on hand, a business loan or even other assets that you’re willing to give up as you go through the divorce. But the end result is simply that your ex takes their earnings and moves on, while you take full control of the business and continue running it. This can cost you something, but you protect your career and your future earnings.
You can sell it completely
The final solution for couples who can’t decide what else to do is often just to sell the business entirely. They find an outside buyer, they sell the company and then they divide the money that they earned in that sale. After that, both are free to go their own ways. If you love your business and it’s very important to you, then this is not an ideal solution, but it is one of the simplest financial solutions, so you just have to decide where you stand.
As you can see, this can be complicated, but you do have options, and it’s important to know what steps to take.
