Business Owner Divorce in Danvers

Over 20 Years of Combined Experience Addressing What You’ve Built

Owning a business when a marriage ends adds a layer of complexity that most divorce cases don’t carry. Questions about how your business is classified, how it’s valued, and what share of it may be subject to division require a different level of legal and financial attention. At Broderick & Mastrapasqua, LLC, we bring over 20 years of combined family law experience and hundreds of handled cases to this work, with a team that knows Massachusetts family law statutes closely and applies that knowledge to address what you’ve built.

A business started during the marriage, or one that grew significantly in value after the wedding, can be treated as marital property even if only one spouse holds title. Getting those questions right from the start matters.

If you’re a business owner facing divorce in Danvers or Essex County, we’re ready to help. Contact Broderick & Mastrapasqua, LLC for a free initial consultation at (978) 721-8861.

Our Approach for Business-Owner Clients

We treat every case as its own situation. For business owners, that means building a legal strategy around your specific business structure, the marriage’s financial history, and what you need going forward. We work to address the full picture: not just the legal outcome, but the financial and personal pressures that come with dissolving a marriage while also addressing the needs of a company.

Where the situation calls for it, we coordinate with a network of trusted appraisers, CPAs, and forensic accountants who can evaluate your business as part of the divorce process. That collaboration means the valuation supporting your case is thorough and built to hold up under scrutiny, rather than treating your business like any other line item on a balance sheet.

How Massachusetts Law Treats a Business in Divorce

Massachusetts is an equitable distribution state. Courts divide marital property fairly, though not necessarily equally, using the factors listed in M.G.L. c. 208, Section 34. Those factors include the length of the marriage, each party’s income and employability, liabilities, health, and each spouse’s opportunity to acquire capital assets in the future. A judge has significant discretion in weighing them.

A business can qualify as marital property subject to division even when title is held by only one spouse. If the business was started or grew during the marriage, courts may classify some or all of its value as marital. Appreciation during the marriage, even in a business one spouse owned before the wedding, can also be brought into the equitable distribution analysis.

Valuing a Closely Held Business

Three approaches are commonly used to value a closely held business in divorce proceedings:

• Market approach: Comparing the business to similar companies that have sold recently to establish a reference point for fair market value
• Income approach: Projecting future earnings and discounting them to a present value, which is often the central method when a business generates steady cash flow
• Asset approach: Calculating total business assets minus liabilities, most commonly applied to asset-heavy or holding companies

Closely held businesses also carry intangible value, including goodwill, that’s harder to quantify than physical assets. A neutral valuation professional is often engaged so the resulting figure can withstand challenge from the other side. We work alongside those professionals throughout the process.