MARK KOHLERMain Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, Main Street Professionals, LLC · Owner at Main Street Professionals, LLC

The #1 Asset Protection Threat No One Wants to Talk About

21 Nov 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:19

In this excerpt, Mark Kohler asks a family‑law expert how clients can protect assets when a divorce is imminent. The expert explains that a marriage‑ending case revolves around five core family‑law categories—property division, spousal support, custody/parental decision‑making, child support, and attorney’s fees—listed in that specific order because each element influences the next. He highlights how disputes often arise over the valuation of a business created during the marriage, noting that forensic accountants may be needed to assess true worth and that different types of goodwill—personal versus enterprise—can be carved out to affect the division outcome. The discussion underscores that divorce is the leading threat to asset protection and that understanding the interplay of these five areas is essential for effective planning.

Chapters

Clients come in and want to do asset protection, their biggest threat is their marriage and they know of divorce is looming. What do you recommend them to start doing?
I always say that what a judge is going to do as far as property is concerned, because there's five main areas of any family law case which are the property division, spousal support, potentially the custody, parental decision making authority aspect is number three. Number four is child support, and number five is attorney's fees. So those are the five main areas in any family law case. And I name them in that order for a reason, because that is the order. And the reason why is each one of those things affects the next thing. So it depends because there are gray areas and these are the areas that people end up fighting over, which are, for example, if a business was created and started during the marriage, and now it's worth, you know, potentially $30 million or whatever, but is it actually worth 30 million? So now you're going to get a forensic accountant involved to decide, well, you know, no, we're not counting this, or no, this is. Or no, they're not actually making this much in income. There's ways that you can carve off different types of goodwill. There's personal goodwill and enterprise goodwill. And that's where people are going to start to dig in and fight.