Property & business division

Community property and business division in a Bay Area divorce

California divides community property equally, but almost everything interesting happens before the division: what is community, what is separate, what it is worth, and who owes whom for what happened during the marriage. In the Bay Area that usually means a house bought with a down-payment gift, stock that vested before and after separation, and a retirement account that predates the marriage.

What I handle

• The family home. Buyouts, sales, deferred sales for children, and reimbursement claims for separate-property contributions and post-separation mortgage payments.
• Retirement and pensions. 401(k)s, IRAs, CalPERS, CalSTRS, county plans and private pensions, including the qualified domestic relations orders that too many judgments leave for later and never finish.
• Equity compensation. Allocation of RSUs and options between community and separate property using the time-rule formulas California courts apply, and coordination with the support analysis.
• Business interests. Valuation of professional practices and closely held companies, goodwill, and the choice between income approaches that can swing a valuation by multiples.
• Tracing. Following separate property through commingled accounts, and attacking a tracing report that doesn't hold up.
• Breach of fiduciary duty. Undisclosed assets, dissipated funds and self-dealing, where the remedy can be the entire asset rather than half.

Why early characterization matters

Settlement is only possible when both sides know what the estate is. The clients who settle well are the ones whose lawyer built a clear schedule of assets and debts, with values and characterization, before the first settlement conference. The ones who settle badly signed a judgment that said "the parties shall divide the pension" and found out years later that nothing had been divided.