Female entrepreneurs own over 11.6 million American businesses. Just like other Tennessee residents, female entrepreneurs can find themselves facing a divorce. When you’re a business owner, one of the biggest concerns that you have is how your business is going to fair after the divorce.
Determine if your business is marital property
When you have questions racing through your mind about what’s going to happen to your business during your divorce, professional guidance may help. First, you need to know whether or not your divorce is on the table as marital property. To determine this, you may want to speak with a licensed attorney.
If you had a prenuptial agreement prior to your marriage, your business is likely separate property. If you have a postnuptial agreement, then Tennessee will honor that agreement and keep your business as separate property. If you don’t have either of these documents, it’s likely that your business will be considered marital property.
What to do if your business is marital property
You’ll most likely want to keep your business as part of the divorce settlement. Ideally, you don’t want to give any ownership of the business to your former spouse. One thing that you can do to potentially retain full ownership of your business is to offer your former spouse something of equal value.
To do this, you’ll need to have a professional appraisal of your business. Once you know its value, you can start to negotiate. For example, you may offer to give your former spouse full ownership of the house, retirement accounts or vehicles in exchange for allowing you to keep their half of the business ownership.
Creating your own business from the ground up can be an exciting experience. Unfortunately, divorce can be a real threat to the business that you hold dear. By taking the information above into consideration, you should be better able to prepare yourself for favorable divorce terms.