A divorce can affect almost all areas of your life, including your profession. If you have a medical practice, chances are, the court may need to value it and give part of it to your spouse, following Virginia family laws.
How Virginia divorce laws may apply to your medical practice
Firstly, Virginia is an equitable distribution state. This means that the court will decide how to divide property fairly between spouses, but not necessarily equally. The unique circumstances of your marriage may determine how this will go. For example, if your partner left their job to take care of the home affairs or to raise kids, the court will factor in that contribution when deciding on asset division.
Further, the court has to figure out which part of your medical practice is separate and marital. Generally, if you started your business before marriage, the court will consider it separate. But, if your practice grew significantly because of your partner’s involvement or if they made it easy for you to work and concentrate on building it (in other words, their contributions as a homemaker), it might be considered marital.
Valuing and dividing your medical malpractice
The part of your medical practice considered marital will be subject to division during your divorce. The appraiser will make an informed decision based primarily on specific facts and other different assumptions that are reasonable. Some issues that they may look into include:
- Premise of value
- Standard of value
- Goodwill
- Double dip
There are basically four ways in which division will occur. If you want to keep your practice, you can either exchange other assets of equal value to your spouse’s share or buy them out. If you can still work together after your divorce, just go on as usual, but your spouse must understand their role and rights as a shareholder in your practice. If there is no way to work together and other resolutions seem impossible, you can sell the practice and split the proceeds equitably.
You should note that you can choose to work everything out by yourselves in Virginia. A judge will only come in when you can’t reach an agreement or if your out-of-court resolutions seem unfair.
