Divorce Dynamics for Business Owners – Ep. 284

Welcome to the Accumulating Wealth Podcast. I’m Hunter Satterfield. And I’m Judson Crawford. We’re CPAs wealth advisors and partners at Cain Watters and Associates, a financial services firm here to help business owners navigate the decisions they face every day. Today we are going to talk about divorce. 

And while this is one of those conversations we hope people never have to need, if you do, it’s critical to have the right information at the right time. And listen, the personal side can be hard enough, but then throw in the business you’ve spent years building and your world start colliding in ways no one warned you about. 

 Because divorce isn’t just a legal event for business owners. It’s a financial, operational, and emotional turning point. And the decisions made here can change the trajectory of the business or your financial plan for years. So it’s time for us to bust open the candy and liquor cabinet for this one. 

Let’s go. 

Okay. So today, Hunter, we have brought on a special guest for this very special somber podcast. Yeah, we have our wonderful partner, Christy Ratcliff.  

Hello Christy. Hello.  

You might listen to her world famous Transition Talk podcast with Charles. World famous. And if you haven’t, you need to. 

That’s right. What is Transition Talk, Christy, while we’re on it? Transition Talk is all about dental transitions, so from buyer side and seller side. 143 episodes of nonsense. And that’s good to know because I was telling people it was something totally different. It was named years ago, Judson. 

Oh, okay. Way to start this somber episode off with that. Yep. Well, yeah, and Christy’s like, “we’re gonna record on what?” And there’s a reason for sure to have you on here, Christy, and we’re excited to have you, but. Yeah, I mean, Judson look, I mean, it’s tough topic, but we, we deal with it with our clients all the time sadly. 

And so we just felt like it was probably something appropriate to cover. I tell younger associate planners and even, people that I’m talking to about my job I hate when I have to go through a divorce or a death with a client. Mm-hmm. It’s the worst. It’s also when I feel like I am the most needed. And that we provide, some of the highest value. So, it is also, we take it very seriously, obviously. And it’s also a time when, we just need to be there for our clients. Yeah. And I think listeners, the reason Christy’s on, as we alluded to earlier is we are actually gonna talk a little bit about divorce valuations because the business really gets taken into account here in a, in a significant way.  

And for those that don’t know, Christy’s the managing partner of both NDP and 7 Pillars, which are two of our affiliate companies. But she’s a CPA, CVA all the things, wears all the hats, and so it’ll be good to get a little bit of your background and I know in the role that you’re in both at NDP and 7 Pillars, you’ve dealt with divorces a lot too. Sadly, right?  

Sadly. I mean, and no one wants to have to split anything. And a practice is one of the more complex things to kinda have to deal with in a divorce. Yeah. And we’ll get to it too. 

Like there’s some different state rules when it comes to it. And things like that. But I mean, Judson, I think that, when we get that sad call or sad email from a client that’s something that he and his spouse, or she and her spouse are having a difficulty. I mean, the hardest thing is that, obviously it’s a pick up the phone and sort of a conversation about, all right, we’re here. 

Like you mentioned, like we’re here to help you. And oftentimes I think, you and I have talked about this, oftentimes I think the earlier we can be involved, the better. Agreed 100%. And again, we understand that that is a hard phone call to make. When you’re on the verge of something like this. 

But the sooner that that we can know about it, the sooner that we can hopefully intervene in a positive way. And also, a lot of it is just being able to speak realities into the minds of our clients. In a situation where a lot of times your mind is not thinking that rationally at times. 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, being able to just give some perspective on the impact on a financial plan, on our history of the realities of the impact upon families and things like that. I mean, I think divorce is one of those, you know, my parents are divorced. Same for you also. 

And it’s one of those things that, there’s ripple effects forever and ever, and I think most people don’t talk about them. But we see those with our clients, the ones that have already gone through it and have had to deal with it. And so being able to just get with clients and not just talk financial stuff, but just talk about all the other implications is super important. 

 Yeah. Now, one thing we should probably mention here, Hunter, is that when we do get that notification, so when we find out that, that this is heading in that direction and specifically, not if it’s necessarily just an if, but when. When we’re talking about this as the direction you’re heading, there are some legalities on our side that our clients need to understand, right? 

That’s right. And if you are a client of Cain Watters, it’s important to understand that that engagement letter with us as a firm is in all likelihood between both you and your spouse. And so in that situation, throughout the divorce, we do represent both sides. I think that’s really important for folks to hear. 

And again it’s sort of a, “Hey, if you need this information or if you have a question from your attorney, a lot of times that gets shared to the other side as well.” And listeners, if you don’t work with Cain Watters, if you work with another advisor and you and your spouse are both on that engagement letter and that advisor is not working with both of you and representing both of you, that is a problem. Yeah. That is a major problem because the reality Judson is that throughout, you know, hopefully divorce has never happened, but in our client relationships, even though maybe the wife is the one that’s actually the practitioner, we work with both of them, right? That’s right. I mean, that’s just the reality of it. And so when a divorce comes, we have to work with both parties.  

And that doesn’t mean we can’t have conversations. It doesn’t mean we can’t have even meetings with one party, or at separate times. Because I think that we have to be able to do that, to be constructive sometimes. 

But what we can’t do is share information with one and not share information with the other. And that also wouldn’t be constructive or fair either. So again our position is we’re trying to get both spouses to the best position possible and to do so frankly, at the lowest cost and the lowest amount of time if we can help in doing that. 

Yeah. And I would think, I mean, it’s an emotional process and your role, I would imagine is to remove a little bit of that emotion and really kind of be able to kind of be the objective force that says, okay, remove that. Here’s kind of what is fair and equitable. And that relationship you guys build with both of those individuals really helps.  

Absolutely. And I think that sometimes where these things, they might start amicably, maybe they don’t always end that way is a lot of times because advisors to each person are just representing their one versus being able to say, “Hey, like, let’s actually talk.” 

And Judson I think this is an important thing too. Like, we are not attorneys, right? And so we cannot represent our clients obviously, during that. At the same time, we are probably the best to understand the tax implications of where things are held. The liquidity of different assets which we’re certainly gonna talk about when it comes to a practice. Retirement accounts, which we’re gonna talk about here in just a second as well.  

So, oftentimes it can start with, “Hey, let’s get your personal financial statement cleaned up. Get that in a really good spot, share that over to both attorneys and we can go from there.” 

Well, and I think that you make a really good point and to maybe put that in just a slightly different way. There’s nobody else outside of your Cain Watters advisor that knows your financial picture as holistically as your advisor at Cain Watters does, right? 

And so, yes, you’re explaining this at some point to attorneys, maybe mediators, maybe different people. We can kind of help you have that holistic picture more quickly than anybody. So just something to remember there.  

So, yeah, let’s talk about some of the — let’s just kind of bucket these things. 

Nuances. Yeah, let’s bucket these things. And obviously there’s sort of different things and like, probably the easiest one is like if you have taxable brokerage accounts or you have personal brokerage accounts, they’re not inside the qualified retirement arena. 

They are liquid, right. From the standpoint, like let’s say they don’t own any private equity or private credit or anything like that, so they’re super liquid. Those things are easy, right? I mean, those can get split 50/50. If we have to use those to balance equity in something else, we can. Those are pretty simple. 

Where we start to introduce some complexity is when we have illiquid or — and by illiquid, meaning you either don’t want to sell it or it can be difficult to sell or things inside of the tax deferred environment. So let’s parking lot tax deferred for a second. We’ll come back to that.  

Judson, when it comes to things like houses, dental buildings, right? These things hold equity. Broadly, how does that stuff get, you know, brought into the picture.  

Yeah. I mean, typically if these assets are not going to be liquidated as part of the divorce, liquidated and split, then there will likely be a valuation, right? 

We can’t tell you the value, of your house or a building. There will likely need to be a third party evaluation on those. And if one party is keeping that, then the equity would likely be in some sort of payout to the spouse that is not getting that asset. Those payouts can be done in cash, it can be done in other assets or it can be done over a period of time. 

I mean, there’s options on how to pay out that equity. But it’s kind of simple, right? So like a dental building is an easy one, right? The house can stay with either spouse or it can be sold. Dental building is unlikely to be sold, right? The practicing spouse is likely going to stay there and continue to rent it. 

And so that is one where, it’s pretty clear that the non-working spouse is probably going to take a payout on that.  

It could introduce some fun if the spouse takes it and is the landlord of the ex-spouse. That could always be interesting.  

Well, and again, we can talk about this more when we talk about illiquid investments, but with a building like that, okay, if you have partners in the building, they probably would not prefer to have an ex spouse in that because it complicates things. 

 It doesn’t have to necessarily be split the minute the divorce happens. There is a reality where the spouse could continue to own 50% of a building and get a payout when that asset is liquidated anyway. So I mean, there are options.  

Yeah, absolutely. So if we wanna take a quick example of this listeners, let’s just think about that dental building as Judson references. Let’s say that it’s worth $500,000, there’s $300,000 of debt. So you got $200,000 of equity, right? And that’s after valuation’s done, debt’s updated. So there’s $200,000 of equity. So presumably it’s $100,000 to each spouse. Now let’s go back to those taxable liquid brokerage accounts, or let’s look at cash, right? 

All you would do is just shift that, right, Judson, you would just shift that a hundred grand to the spouse that’s not keeping it by giving that spouse more of the cash or taxable accounts, and now all of a sudden they’re equal on those two assets. Correct?  

That’s exactly right. Yeah.  

And the house one is more complicated as, as Judson mentioned, because if one spouse wants to stay in it and then the other’s gotta go get one, you’ve gotta calculate equity and then figure out how we’re gonna get that other spouse into a house. But there’s typically gonna be mortgages on both properties anyway, so that equity number is a lot less. That’s right.  

Okay, so let’s talk the next bucket, which may be a little bit more complex, which is tax-deferred money. And I wanna break this down into two.  

The first is IRA money. Okay. Or IRAs, as we like to call them on here. So, IRA money is governed by the IRS. There’s no ERISA involved in these plans. And so IRAs actually can be relatively simple and that you can shift between spouses based on a divorce order.  

So if one — generally Judson though, those are gonna be relatively equal if both spouses have been funding them. I think the situations we deal with sometimes might be. Maybe a spouse has a rollover IRA. That’s exactly right. Yeah. And so in that situation, you basically shift between them, right? 

That’s right. Yeah. So that one’s relatively easy. The difficult one is the () () 401k plan. And the reason is that the 401k plan is followed regulatorily by a group called ERISA, which those that have a 401k know that. And so, ERISA has got different rules because basically the way it states is you can’t move money While that 401k is still open between people, even ex-spouses. So what happens is there’s something called a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, or as we call it, a “quadro” that gets done as a part of the divorce because typically Judson, we’re going to see that the spouse who’s maybe the dental practice owner has a lot more built in there than the spouse who’s not, right. 

100% because they’re getting the profit sharing. Right. And then maybe like a DB as well, right? That’s right.  

So this quadro, basically what it allows is it allows each party to get relatively equal on those accounts because man, like as we’ve said, for 200 and something episodes now, money inside of a qualified retirement account is very valuable, so it would be punitive to the spouse that didn’t get something. So that quadro’s basically a function of the divorce gets sent to the — to ERISA to essentially equal those out, correct?  

That’s right. And to your point, hunter if you finalize a divorce, you can get the IRA switched up very quickly but the quadro will take some more time. Just bottom line, it will take some more time to get that shifted because you will have to get, again, this quadro written, sent to the administrator to get things shifted around. And so it just takes a little bit longer.  

Yeah. And again, if you’re gonna shift those 50/50, you’re gonna shift the IRAs 50/50, then really it just comes down to equity and illiquid assets balanced out by cash and personal accounts. I think it’s relatively easy before we get to the elephant in the room, which is the practice. Yep.  

One last asset I wanted to mention before we go onto some of these other things is if you might own some private equity instruments somewhere in your personal account. 

So especially if they’re drawdown capital call vehicles. We have seen this Judson, I’ve seen this before with clients where you might subscribe to a $500,000 private equity fund and you might only be $100,000 into that. So there’s still $400,000 more. Typically, we would wanna sign that to the spouse who has the best cash flow ongoing, because that’s going to be required to meet capital. 

They oftentimes, Judson won’t let the client out because of a divorce. That’s right.  

That’s right. And again, I think that you, so in that situation, you’ve got two sides to it. You’ve got the cash flow, then you’ve got where the value is. So like in that case, at that moment, that may only be valued at $100,000. 

Right. So, the split may not be that hard, but then you’ve gotta take that future cash flow of $400,000, which again, depending on a lot of other things in the divorce, may require some of the cash that you have sitting there. Whatever it is. That’s for us to help you out with.  

Going back to what we were talking about in the building, if you have private investments that are fully funded but have not been— had a liquidity event yet, again, that’s something that either can be balanced out with other assets or that one is probably even easier for two spouses or two now ex-spouses to own jointly. And then once that liquidity event happens, that’s when the split can happen. 

So again, that may be a mountain, you don’t have to get over if you can just treat it like that, right. Because the fewer of these obstacles that you have to face, the quicker you can get to a resolution.  

That’s right. And look, I think that’s actually really great clarity for those that are listening that are either going through it or just interested in the topic. 

The reality is it doesn’t all have to be tidied up and split at divorce. There can still be some lingering assets that get trued up later. Unfortunately, one of those that does have to is the practice, and so we do wanna bounce back to like some other small nuances of post-divorce, but I think this is a good time to bring in Christy, because we have this practice, right? 

And it gets really gnarly because typically both spouses are not dentists or doctors. So they both can’t own it. So the one that owns it and runs it is going to be the one that retains it, but there’s a lot of value inside there as well. Now I think it’s important to set the scene for a second before we get to Christy here, Judson, that remind folks that a practice has two components, intangible value and tangible value.  

Because those two things matter when it comes to divorces. You wanna break those down again quickly, Judson so people know.  

Yep. Pretty easy. Tangible assets are the ones that you can physically touch and feel. So in a dental practice, if you think about it, we’re talking about, primarily furniture fixtures and equipment supplies, and then your accounts receivable or contracts receivable. 

If you’re an ortho practice, your intangibles are basically the things you can’t touch and feel, which are patient records and the goodwill and the goodwill in a dental practice, Christy can be a large piece.  

It can, Judson. The Goodwill is a primary part of any practice valuation that we’re doing, whether it’s for divorce or whether it’s for practice transition, the difference in the goodwill for a divorce valuation is typically, there’s two types of goodwill. 

There’s personal goodwill and there’s corporate goodwill. If you’re just going through a normal transition meaning you’re just selling your practice in 100% or you’re selling it to a partner, the bifurcation of that goodwill is really just a tax impact, right? And that’s really all it is. 

In a divorce valuation, and the reason why they’re different is, every state looks at this a little bit differently, but certain states put more or less the ability to actually split that personal goodwill. So if you think about it, if you are a solo doctor running a practice and everyone, you run it, you are the referral, everyone’s sending patients to you. You’re the person who’s built it. You hung the shingle, the whole nine. That practice is likely a lot of personal goodwill, right? And so if we have a big chunk of personal goodwill and we have this other tangible goodwill, if I’m going through a divorce, there are certain states that will say you don’t have to split that personal goodwill. 

You only have to split the tangible goodwill. And so what that does in a divorce situation is it puts the spouses at odds, right? There’s a conflict of interest because the spouse that’s not gonna get the practice wants there to be less personal goodwill. And the spouse that is the doctor or the owner is going to want there to be a lot of personal goodwill. 

And so clearly complicated from a state by state rules, but also just it adds another layer of complexity, in the whole divorce schematic.  

Yeah, and I, we won’t go state by state folks, but let me just level set for a second as we dive deeper to give you a little bit of perspective. Let’s just say that your practice is worth $2 million.  

Typically, in today’s day, maybe 30% of that is tangible, right? So we can just carve off, $ 600,000 and say, all right, the rest of $1.4 million of equity in this business, or value in this business, I should say is this goodwill component. Okay, so we get to divorce. Let’s say that we’ve got $1.4 million of goodwill and there’s no debt. 

The question becomes how do we split that and that’s what Christy’s saying here is of the $1.4 million, how much is personal and how much is corporate? Because that breakdown is incredibly important. If certain states say, “oh, the personal goodwill doesn’t need to be split, or does need to be split.” Or “the corporate goodwill doesn’t need to be split or does need to be split.” 

That’s a big number, Judson, it’s a very big number. And we can get at odds in situations, which is why divorce valuations, which we’ll talk about in a second, are so important because we can get at odds very quickly with our spouses on, let’s just, again, let’s say that the practice owner is the male and the relationship, and this female’s like, “whoa, wait, I’m not getting credit for this $1.4 million in any way?” 

Well, and what happens often is when our clients come in to their consult every year we talk about the valuation of their practice as if — most of the time we’re talking about, from a personal financial statement or from an analysis standpoint, ” Hey, doc, if you sell your practice to doctor associate over here, your practice is worth $2 million.” 

 And I think it becomes hard because the non-working spouse has that lodged into their head and often go into this divorce situation thinking, “okay, here’s this asset of $2 million that I will get half of,” and the reality is, that is not the case. Yeah. And that alone becomes just a really hard thing to get passed in most of the divorces I’ve seen. 

Especially if the, I mean, it’s complicated further, if the spouse works in the practice, maybe they’re the front desk they’ve put in the time, right. Those patients know them too. Unfortunately, that isn’t really a part of that, right. It is still that their contribution to the practice is really not a part of that analysis, and so it really again, takes removing some of that emotion. 

And in a divorce valuation, you’re looking at a variety of factors and saying, for example, the name of the practice, right? Is the name of the practice ABC Family Dentistry, or is it John Smith, DDS, right? And if it’s ABC, that’s more corporate Goodwill. If it’s John Smith, that’s more personal. 

So a whole slew of who are they sending referrals to, what kind of process exists, how often is the doctor there? So all of those questions go into play. So if I’m — in your example, Hunter, the wife who’s worked at the practice, and all the patients know me. That can create that emotional, kind of conflict as well. 

And again, if you’re not the spouse who’s worked in the practice, you’ve probably, stepped back and allowed the owner to kind of grow with that. So I think that those things really kind of require a good level of expertise to truly understand how do we look at goodwill in an objective way so that both parties understand how we arrived at that personal goodwill number, whatever it ends up being.  

So when we talk about valuations, divorce, valuation versus other, Is the total valuation different between the two? No. Right, so it’s really just the breakdown of the actual assets underpinning that valuation. 

Correct. Okay. In a normal practice valuation for a buy sell arrangement, right, we are not going to break down personal and corporate goodwill. That is something typically that an advisor, a CPA would do as part of that practice transition. In this case though, that is actually one of the reasons we’re engaged, is to specifically break down that personal and corporate goodwill.  

And so, and in engagement, the purpose, how we get to it, the cash flows, the overhead, the risk assessment, all of those things in a normal valuation exist. It’s that additional layer of saying, okay, now that we’ve come to the value and we’ve come to the breakdown of goodwill versus tangible, how do we then further break down that corporate and personal goodwill? 

Now, are you engaged by both parties to the divorce or just the doctor who represents the practice? 

 It could be either. I’m gonna be honest, I think this is one of those situations where if there’s any chance of being amicable, coming to the table and saying, “Hey, we’re gonna choose, we’re both gonna do our research. We’re gonna choose one firm, and we’re gonna go with whatever that firm says.”  

Because again, valuation, if, one spouse gets one, the other gets the other, they’re going to be different. That’s just the nature of valuation and it just creates one more thing that you’re both spending funds on and that you’re both having a chance to argue over. 

Well, and I think, and I tell people this when they’re going into valuations just for, again, non divorce situations, is that if you’re hiring a reputable company that is not one-sided, the valuation should be within a few percentage of each other. And so if you, believe you’re hiring a reputable company, it’s not worth the extra fees. 

Trust me, if you’re going through a divorce, you’re gonna be spending plenty of money on attorney’s fees and valuations and everything else like that. The more you cannot duplicate that, the more that both spouses will end up with in the end.  

Absolutely. I mean, this is how we do any other kind of evaluation, but when someone calls me. And their only goal is to, if I’m the owner, doctor, make this as low as possible, right. That’s just not how we work, right. And I’ll disclose that and say we’re gonna do our best job and, at the end of the day, you’re gonna get the value that your practice should get.  

Alright. So does every — so we kind of understand like what a divorce valuation entails and makes up. Does every divorce actually need a valuation?  

The factual answer is no. But they should, right? Because just like you said earlier, it can start out one way and end another way. And I think at the end of the day, both parties just wanna walk away knowing that they got their share of whatever those marital assets were. 

And I think whether it’s a dental practice or an ophthalmology practice, whatever it might be, both parties have probably put some time into that. And so I think it’s just in our view, it’s a factual objective thing that both parties can look at. And I think starting off getting one is better than not. 

 So the process is probably gonna be the primary difference between the two, right? If the valuation itself is gonna come out the same whether it’s a divorce evaluation or not, obviously the allocation’s gonna be a little bit different. But the process is the biggest thing, right?  

So you are asking those questions about, “talk to me about the community, about the time you’ve spent at this practice, the staff, the patients, the referring doctors,” all of those pieces are maybe not things you would normally ask for in evaluation that you’re asking for here.  

Correct. Not in the way that we’re asking to bifurcate that personal and corporate goodwill. 

Another thing that we do that’s different that we don’t do in a normal evaluation, we’re also the expert witness for the attorneys. If, one spouse engages us, instead of both, we’re going to be the person who would go to mediation or go to trial and explain kind of how we did what we did to back that up. 

And so making sure that t he individuals that you are hiring are reputable and have that experience to do that because they could — they’re gonna influence that mediator or that judge.  

What gives you the right to call yourself an expert in this situation? Do you have letters behind your name or what? 

I do. Yeah, I do.  

So you wanna talk a little bit about why that expert designation is super important when it comes to this and what that means.  

I mean, anytime you are in a courtroom setting, right, you are talking to people who do not have any expertise in the numbers or the accounting or whatever they’re speaking about. 

And so as a certified valuation analyst, we are required to follow certain standards that are across the industry. And so being able to go into a courtroom, educate, explain why you did something, show the systematic process is really helpful in, hopefully it’s not a jury, but a judge and a mediator in getting them to understand that the work that’s gone into this has weight behind it and has a process in formula versus ” I felt like this was the number,” which is what you sometimes get. 

Okay, Christy, thank you for that. Next question is, what is the process like to get this done and how would somebody get started? 

Yeah, I would say, if you know a divorce is in your horizon or in the middle of one, I would say the first step is education. You need to call our team another team, whoever you’re gonna call, be educated about what you’re about to go into and make sure the advisor you’re about to hire is the right one for you and your spouse or you. 

In our world, calling NDP, we basically understand where are you in your divorce process, how often is it gonna go into mediation or litigation. And then we’ll just start a normal process, right? We’re gathering all your practice financials, operational information, we’re asking you questions. 

We’ll probably have an in-depth interview midway through to ask about those personal and corporate goodwill pieces. There are times where we’re also talk to your spouse about those pieces. And if you’re open to it, the best case is to be able to talk to like an office manager or someone to get their take on how they view it, because it’s a non-biased piece that really helps from a court perspective and from a report standpoint. 

But other than that, it’s a normal evaluation process and I think the ultimate goal is understanding the cash flow, understanding the risk. I’ll say that for me that’s also a big part of this process is, the practice itself is gonna have a value, but the practice has, like you said, like an investment, it has a cash flow that exists every year. That’s gonna be something that — another asset you’re gonna have to really figure out how to deal with.  

Yep. Yeah. All super good. And we’re running a little bit long folks, but stay with us because we do wanna just cover one last topic, which is sort of t he cashflow piece, right. Judson?  

So we’ve talked about how the assets get divided up, things like that. But we actually, I actually still work with two separate couples who have both been divorced and I still work with both parties on cashflow and investments and managing everything. But I mean, that remains a tough one for the non-working or non-practice owner, spouse managing all that. 

And then for the practice owning spouse, who might have had to have their assets split, building things back up as well, right?  

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that there’s a couple different pieces to cash flow that have to be realized is that what we’ve been talking about in this podcast to this point is asset values and asset values have to be split upon divorce. 

Unless you happen to be in a very interesting situation, which is, again, the rare situation where you both have a very similar earning stream. There’s also going to be a division post-divorce of what happens with cash flows. And that is separate from what this asset valuation we’ve been talking about, to date is. 

And so I think that understanding that is a big piece of it. The other thing I’ll say about cash flow, if you are really heading in this direction, is if this is something that you, a friend or a family member is coming upon, this is a conversation I had just a couple days ago with a client. 

If you’re heading in this direction, don’t make any major moves. Don’t make any major purchases. Don’t shuffle things around because you think that it can give you advantages or anything else like that before you talk to an advisor. Because frankly, if you’re going in this direction, everything you do is going to be looked at and speculated upon, and you don’t wanna do something now that you regret, in six months when you may be sitting there making this negotiation.  

Yeah, it’s gonna be heavily scrutinized in every way. And again, folks, while it’s not a great topic, hopefully this has given you some direction. If you’ve got questions on the valuation side, certainly reach out to Christy and her team. I f you’ve got questions, if you’re not a Cain Watters client, you’ve got questions on the other side, certainly reach out to us and we’ll do the best we can in guiding you through and trying to get you through it. 

The last thing I would say is that if you are looking for us to help, if it’s just one person that’s hiring us, then that certainly is a different engagement. But just be aware that our goal is going to be able to get you through this in an amicable way. That’s our first and foremost goal. That’s the foundation of the firm. So I’ll leave it with that.  

Also, if you would like to listen to the wonderful Christy and her podcast, which you have an amazing voice for podcasts, go check out Transition Talk. It’s dope. Absolutely.  

Well, back to our podcast. The best way to keep up with us is to subscribe to this podcast. That way you never have to miss an episode, and you can go back and listen to all the others. If you’re enjoying it so far, please leave us a review. If you have a question, comment, or a suggestion for a future episode, drop us a line at cainwatters.com/wealth. 

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