There are many times when a business owner has owned a business for several years prior to the marriage. So we talk about these issues as the difference between separate property and marital property. Separate property was owned prior to the marriage and an expert might come in and “trace” the assets to determine if they are still separate or have been co-mingled or turned into marital property.

Typically we recommend you continue to run your business in the same manner as you did prior to the divorce and not to make any decisions that you think will make the value lower (or higher) or do things that you think are more advantageous in the divorce litigation. Here's the thing - most of the time if you decide to do something different in order to increase debt or reduce your profit which you think will help you, it could potentially backfire on you.