In a Divorce, An Attorney Needs to Make Sure Their Interests are Protected with the Help of an Irvine Divorce Law Firm

As a lawyer, you know the importance of quality legal advice. Depending on your area of practice, you may also have some familiarity with California’s divorce laws. You know that divorcing spouses are required to divide their community property equally. You might know that spouses who earn less are generally entitled to alimony. In any case, you know that achieving a favorable result is as much about executing an effective strategy as it is about knowing the law.

At Seastrom Tuttle Murphy Dockstader, we bring decades of experience to representing California lawyers in divorce. Our practice is largely devoted to representing high-net-worth spouses, including lawyers and other business owners and professionals. As a result, we are intimately familiar with the unique issues involved with partnership, division of sizable retirement and securities accounts, and other high-value assets, and we are able to effectively and efficiently represent our clients as they continue to devote the majority of their time and attention to their practices.

Protecting Your Assets and Income in Your Divorce

As a high-net-worth individual, you have a lot to protect in your divorce. Unfortunately, unless you have a prenuptial agreement, you will not be able to protect everything. California is one of the few remaining states that adheres to a true “community property” law that requires divorcing spouses to divide their shared estate down the middle. Similarly, California’s alimony law focuses includes consideration of both spouse’s standard of living; and, while this law does not require an equal split of post-divorce income, it does generally require high-earning lawyers and other professionals to provide financial support to their former spouses.

Protecting Your Practice or Partnership Interest

If you own your own legal practice, or if you are a partner in a large or mid-size firm, your ownership interest in your practice could be on the table in your divorce as a component of your community estate. For divorce purposes, business ownership interests are treated similarly to other types of property. Even if you owned your practice or were elevated to partner prior to your marriage, it is still possible that at least a portion of your interest could be subject to division in your divorce. Again, we have specific experience in this area, and we can work with you to protect your ownership interest and the autonomy of your practice to the fullest extent possible.

Preserving Your Relationship with Your Children

Finally, if you have minor children, preserving your relationship with your children can present some unique challenges as well. California law places mothers and fathers on an equal playing field with regard to custody (or “parenting time”), but your spouse may try to use the fact that you work long hours against you. We are familiar with these kinds of arguments, and we have had significant success securing our clients’ desired parenting time rights. To learn more, schedule a confidential initial consultation today.

Schedule a Confidential Initial Consultation at Seastrom Tuttle Murphy Dockstader

With offices in Orange County, we represent lawyers in divorce throughout Southern California. If you are ready to get started, call us at 949-474-0800 or contact us online now.

Common Questions About Divorce for Attorneys in Orange County

How is a law firm partnership interest valued in a divorce?

It depends almost entirely on what the partnership agreement provides and what the interest actually produces. Many firm agreements limit a departing partner to the balance in the capital account, which is far less than the economic value of the practice. A court is not bound by that figure, but it is influential where the formula has actually governed real partner departures. The analysis then turns to the capital account, the partner’s share of accounts receivable and work in progress, any goodwill the interest carries, and whether the agreement’s transfer restrictions genuinely limit what the interest is worth.

Are contingency fees earned after separation community property?

Partly, in many cases. A contingency fee that resolves after separation on a case worked during marriage is generally apportioned between the community and the separate estate according to when the work that produced the fee was performed. That requires reconstructing the labor on the file, from time records where they exist and from the case chronology where they do not. The result is that a large post-separation fee on a long-running matter is rarely all separate property, and rarely all community, which makes the documentation of the work timeline the decisive evidence.

How is client confidentiality protected during the divorce?

Carefully, and it has to be planned rather than improvised. Discovery in an attorney’s divorce reaches financial records that identify clients, matters, and fee arrangements, all of which carry confidentiality obligations independent of the divorce. The usual solutions are producing records with client identities redacted, aggregating fee data by period rather than by matter, stipulated protective orders limiting who may see the production, and using a neutral forensic accountant so the sensitive detail goes to the expert rather than to the opposing party. Those protections are far easier to obtain before the first production than after.

Can a divorce be kept out of view in the county where an attorney practices?

To a substantial degree, yes, though the case file itself is a public record. The realistic protections are procedural: resolving the matter through mediation or private judging rather than open court, keeping detailed financial schedules out of publicly filed declarations and referencing them as exhibits held by the parties, and settling contested financial issues by agreement rather than by an evidentiary hearing. Each hearing that does not happen is a set of filings that never becomes public, which is why the choice of process matters more here than in most cases.

About the Firm

Seastrom Tuttle Murphy Dockstader is a family law firm in Irvine representing clients throughout Orange County, and in Los Angeles County. The firm practices family law exclusively. Its attorneys include Fellows of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers and of the International Academy of Family Lawyers, and attorneys certified as specialists in family law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. Call 949.474.0800 to discuss an attorney’s divorce with the firm.