You, like many other Minnesota entrepreneurs, likely consider your business a major part of your life. You have worked hard to ensure that your operations remain stable and that you generate a revenue that allows you and your employees to earn a respectable income. However, you may have serious concerns about the stability of your company now that you are facing a divorce.
Unfortunately, ending a marriage can have significant effects on a business, especially when it comes to property division. Your soon-to-be ex-spouse may have a claim to certain business assets or even a portion of the company itself. While you may already feel on guard over your company’s funds and ownership, it is essential that you remember your intangible assets as well.
What are your intangible business assets?
When it comes to running a business, many of your important assets may not be items you can physically touch or readily access. In fact, ideas, reputation, the rights to creative works and much more can play important parts in how well your company thrives. These intangible assets could fall to the wayside in your divorce preparation because you do not see them or fully know their value at any given time. However, they could end up the subject of property division proceedings.
Some intangible assets that you may have reason to take into consideration include the following:
- Copyright to any products, services or other works that your company may provide
- Trademarks for designs, logos and other details identifiable to your company
- Patents for any invention designs your company has created
- Goodwill that could result in additional funds based on the reputation of the company in the event of a merger or acquisition
As you might expect, determining the value of such assets can prove immensely difficult, even when doing so for business-related uses. As a result, a significant part of your property division preparation may involve attempting to obtain a professional valuation of these assets to determine how they could affect your divorce case.
How can you prepare?
As mentioned, valuation of these assets is important to divorce preparation, but you may also want to do an assessment of other important assets, any protections you may have placed on your company and its assets, and ways you could negotiate to reach an outcome beneficial to you and your business as a whole. Discussing these matters with an attorney experienced in high-asset divorce cases may prove useful to you.