A divorce can impact all aspects of your life. This includes your professional life. As a Medscape article notes, if you are a doctor, this could include the medical practice you’ve worked so hard to build. As a doctor, what happens with your practice can have major impacts on your professional and financial future. So, it can be important to be aware of the different ways a divorce could potentially impact your practice.
Property division and your medical practice
One thing that could have major impacts on what sorts of concerns a divorce would raise in connection to your medical practice is whether the practice would be subject to division in the divorce. Generally, here in California, community property is subject to division, while separate property is not. Under the state’s community property laws, the split community property is generally subject to is a 50/50 split.
Is a medical practice community or separate property? It depends on the circumstances, including when the practice was formed, when the marriage started and whether there was a prenuptial agreement that addressed the practice.
If a medical practice falls under community property, what happens in property division negotiations and proceedings could have major impacts on the practice’s future. Various factors, including what the monetary values of the practice and its assets are determined to be, could influence how much a doctor ends up paying his or her ex in a divorce settlement to maintain full ownership of the practice. This, in turn, would affect what resources a doctor would have for supporting his or her practice after the divorce.
Alimony matters could greatly impact your financial situation
Another thing that could have impacts on how strong of a position you would be in to give financial support to your medical practice following a divorce is what happens with alimony. Here in California, whether a doctor would be subject to paying alimony in a divorce and how much such payments would likely be depends on the specific circumstances.
The emotions of the divorce could seep into your practice
In addition to financial impacts, a divorce can impact you on a very deep level emotionally. It could be easy to bring such emotions with you into work. If you let the emotions from your divorce control your actions in your medical practice, it could raise a wide range of potential problems for the practice. So, when getting a divorce, it can be important to keep a close eye on whether the divorce is affecting how you act at work.