How is a business or professional practice valued in a divorce?

Valuing a business or professional practice is one of the most complex and frequently contested aspects of a high-asset divorce. The value of a closely held business is not simply the balance in its accounts; it may involve its assets, its earnings and cash flow, its goodwill, and its future prospects, and different valuation methods can produce meaningfully different figures. Professional practices raise the added question of how much value is tied to the individual professional versus the enterprise itself. These valuations typically require financial experts, and the spouses’ experts often disagree, which in litigation becomes another expensive battle. Mediation is well suited to valuation disputes because the exercise is fundamentally about reconciling assumptions and numbers rather than assigning blame; a neutral experienced in business valuation can help the parties narrow the gap and reach an agreed figure far more efficiently than dueling appraisals at trial.