Divorce Attorneys for Business Owners in Peoria, AZ

Overview

A great many Peoria businesses are run by a couple. One does the work, one does the books, and neither has an employment contract because for twenty years none was needed.

When that marriage ends, the business loses half its management on the same day it acquires a legal dispute. Call for a free consultation before either of you does something irreversible.

Is the business community

Two Owners, One Marital Estate

Under A.R.S. § 25-211 a business acquired or built during the marriage is community property. Where both spouses worked in it, that conclusion is rarely even contested. What is contested is what happens next.

A.R.S. § 25-213 preserves separate property brought into the marriage or received by gift or inheritance, with its rents, issues and profits, which can matter where one spouse’s family seeded the business originally.

Division falls under A.R.S. § 25-318, where the court assigns separate property back and divides the community equitably, though not necessarily in kind. Courts are strongly disinclined to leave divorcing spouses as ongoing business partners, so in practice one of you is buying the other out.

When both of you work there

Who Leaves, and What That Costs

The first decision is who continues to run it, and it should be made on who can actually operate the business profitably rather than on who feels more entitled to it.

The second is what the departing spouse was worth to the operation. A spouse who ran the office for years has been providing labour the business will now have to buy, and that replacement cost belongs in the valuation and often in the support analysis too. Equally, a spouse who drew a salary well above market for limited work has been taking a distribution by another name, and normalising the earnings will surface it.

The third is timing. A buyout paid over years from the business’s own cash flow ties the departing spouse’s financial security to the continuing spouse’s competence, which is an uncomfortable position that needs security written into the agreement rather than assumed.

None of this works if the two of you are still fighting inside the business while the case runs. Agreeing an interim operating arrangement early is usually worth more than any argument you could win later.

Running it meanwhile

The Injunction Applies to Both of You

On filing, A.R.S. § 25-315 issues an automatic injunction restraining both spouses from transferring, encumbering, concealing, selling or otherwise disposing of community property, except as related to the usual course of business, the necessities of life, or court fees and reasonable attorney fees.

In a two-owner business this cuts both ways, which owners frequently forget. Changing the bank signatories to exclude your spouse, removing their access to the accounting system, taking their name off the entity filings or emptying the operating account are not the usual course of business. They are the actions most likely to be described to a judge as self-help.

The injunction carries the force of a signed superior court order and is enforceable by contempt. It binds the filing spouse immediately and the other on service or actual notice.

If the working relationship has genuinely broken down, the answer is a temporary order setting out how the business runs in the meantime. That is available and it is a great deal safer than acting unilaterally.