If you own a business and your marriage is ending, the first question is usually the blunt one. Does my spouse get half of it?
The short answer in Florida is that your spouse may hold a marital interest in the business, and that interest may have to be paid for, but no court is looking to install your former spouse as your business partner. Florida begins property division at an equal split of the marital estate, and among the statutory reasons to divide unevenly is the desirability of retaining an interest in a business, corporation, or professional practice intact and free from any claim or interference by the other party. In practice, most owners keep the company and settle up with something else.
What that settlement costs turns on three separate questions: how much of the business is marital, what it is worth, and how the marital share gets paid.
How much of the business is marital
If you formed or bought the company during the marriage, it is presumed marital. That is true whether or not your spouse ever worked in it, and whatever the corporate filings say. The burden of proving that an asset is nonmarital rests on the spouse making that claim.
If you owned the business before the marriage, it generally starts out nonmarital. That is not the end of the analysis. Florida treats the enhancement in value and appreciation of a nonmarital asset as a marital asset when it results from the efforts of either spouse during the marriage, or from marital funds spent on it, or both. The company you brought to the marriage stays yours in principle, while the growth you produced by working in it can be marital.
A valid written agreement changes the picture. A prenuptial or postnuptial agreement can define the business and its growth as nonmarital, set a formula, or waive claims, and Florida courts enforce those agreements when they are validly made.
Active growth and passive growth
Where a premarital business is involved, the case often narrows to one line: how much of the increase in value came from the owner's work, and how much came from forces nobody controlled.
Growth traceable to your labor, your management decisions, or marital money put into the company is active, and the marital estate can reach it. Growth driven by market conditions, inflation, or an appreciating industry is passive and generally stays nonmarital. An owner who runs the company day to day will find most of the growth reads as active.
Two dates, and they are not the same date
Florida separates the date used to decide what is marital from the date used to decide what it is worth. The cut off date for classifying assets and liabilities as marital is the earliest of the date the parties sign a valid separation agreement, another date that agreement expressly sets, or the date the petition for dissolution is filed. The date for determining value is whatever date the judge finds just and equitable, and different assets may be valued as of different dates.
That matters for a company still trading through a long case, since revenue moves and contracts land or lapse.
What the business is worth
Since July 1, 2024, Florida statute states the standard of value for a closely held business: fair market value, meaning the price at which property would change hands between a willing and able buyer and a willing and able seller, with neither under compulsion to buy or sell and both having reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts. That is a hypothetical buyer, not the strategic buyer who once made you an offer.
Reaching that number is expert work. A credentialed valuation analyst or forensic accountant will weigh an asset based approach, an income approach that normalizes earnings and converts them to value, and a market approach built on comparable sales. A contested case often produces two reports and a hearing about the difference.
In a contested case the court must make specific written findings identifying, valuing, and distributing the marital assets and liabilities. Those findings are the backbone of property division, and they are where a valuation holds up or does not.
Personal goodwill and enterprise goodwill
This is the part of Florida law that surprises owners most, and it can be the largest number in the case. Goodwill is the value of a business beyond its hard assets, and Florida splits it in two.
Enterprise goodwill exists separate and distinct from the continued presence and reputation of the owner spouse: the location, the trained staff, the systems, the recurring contracts, the name on the door that keeps producing revenue for a buyer. It is a marital asset and must be valued.
Personal goodwill is the value that attaches to you: your skill, your reputation, the reason clients call you rather than the company. Florida does not treat it as a distributable marital asset. The Florida Supreme Court drew that line in Thompson v. Thompson in 1991, and the 2024 amendment placed it in the statute.
The statute also directs the court to consider evidence that a covenant not to compete would be required on a sale, while making clear that such evidence alone does not prevent a finding of enterprise goodwill. For a professional practice, or any company whose customers follow a person rather than a brand, that line can move the value by a wide margin.
Buyout, offset, or sale
Once the marital share has a number attached to it, there are three practical ways to resolve it.
- An offset. The owner keeps the business and the other spouse takes other marital property of comparable value: home equity, retirement accounts divided by court order, or investment accounts. This is the most common answer, since it does not pull cash out of a working company.
- A buyout. The owner keeps the business and pays the other spouse for the marital share, in a lump sum or in installments over a fixed period. Florida law allows a court to order such a payment, and it vests when the judgment is entered and is treated as a debt rather than as support.
- A sale. The least common route, and usually a last resort, reached when there is not enough other property to balance the estate or neither spouse intends to keep running the business.
What almost never happens is the two of you remaining co-owners.
The income question underneath all of it
The earnings of the company are used to value the business for property division, and the owner's income from that same company is used to set support. Valuation professionals normalize owner compensation to a market rate for the work being done, so what remains is a return on the business rather than pay for labor. How the two calculations relate is fact specific and frequently argued, so raise it early rather than after a report is filed.
What to gather, and what not to do
Florida's mandatory disclosure requirements will put much of this in front of both sides early, so assemble it in order now. Expect to produce several years of business and personal tax returns, financial statements, the general ledger, K-1s, the operating or shareholder agreement including any buy sell provisions, loan documents and personal guarantees, and payroll records.
Two cautions. Do not change how you have always paid yourself, and do not move money, defer income, accelerate expenses, or take unusual distributions once divorce is on the horizon. Intentional dissipation of marital assets is a statutory factor a court can weigh against the spouse responsible, and in a business with clean books those moves are visible.
Where this goes from here
A Tampa case is filed in the Hillsborough County Circuit Court, Family Law Division, at the George Edgecomb Courthouse on East Twiggs Street. Most of the work on a business happens long before anyone stands in that courtroom: classification, records, valuation, and the negotiation that follows.
If a closely held business is the largest thing in your marital estate, it is worth understanding how the pieces fit before positions harden. Our page on high net worth divorce covers the wider set of issues that arrive alongside a business. Rechel & Associates has been serving Tampa Bay families since 1992, and you can reach the firm at (813) 931-8111 to arrange a consultation.