Business in Divorce
Posted March 9th, 2012
Where businesses are involved in divorce there are a raft of considerations which need to be thought through carefully before a financial settlement is concluded. However with the right type of pre-planning and thought reasonable settlements can be made, and time and resources used to rebuild assets into the future.
The first consideration should be to taxation and it should be noted that for the purposes of Capital Gains Tax it is the date of separation that is generally more relevant than anything happens within the divorce itself
The key here is that where a transfer is made in the same tax year as the separation there will be no taxable capital gains or losses for that matter, for the transferor. When considering the asset position of the business or partnership it is important to check ownership particularly in relation to shares or the individual asset in relation to a partnership.
Possible solutions may involve the purchase of shares or the sale of property to enable the financial settlement to be concluded.
Care needs to be taken where pensions hold assets of the business. Often we see shares and properties occupied by the business held and owned by the pension scheme.
Therefore further thought needs to be taken on how these assets are dealt with.
This is an extremely complicated area of financial settlements on divorce and it is essential that you get the right team around you to assist your negotiations. In my opinion, this would be a family lawyer, accountant and independent financial adviser.
If this is an issue that affects you please call in confidence on 0800 0921229 or email me at phil@thedivorceifa.co.uk
