High Asset Divorce Lawyer in Austin, Texas

When the estate is the hard part

Some divorces are hard because of the conflict. Others are hard because of what the two of you own: a company one of you runs, a house on the water, retirement accounts that took twenty years to build. The marriage question is settled; the property question is not.

Texas starts from a broad presumption: everything either of you owns on the day of divorce belongs to the community estate until it is proven separate. The court then divides that community estate in a way it finds just and right, taking account of both of you and of any children. Just and right is not a coin flip and it is not automatically 50/50.

Our work in these cases is quiet and exact: identify what is community and what is separate, put a defensible value on the things that are hard to value, and negotiate a division that holds up years later. Most of it happens in private, and most of these cases never see a trial.

What that looks like for your estate is discussed plainly at the first conversation.

The short answer

Texas divides the community estate in a way that is just and right, which is not always 50/50. The court weighs both of you and any children, not just a calculator.

What you owned before the marriage, or received by gift or inheritance, stays separate property. But only if you can trace it, and tracing is documents, not memory.

Most high asset divorces end in a private mediated agreement, not a public trial. The detail of your finances stays out of the court file.

What makes a divorce high asset

It is not one number. It is complexity: assets that are hard to value, hard to divide, or both.

The cases we see usually involve some mix of a closely held business or professional practice, more than one property, retirement accounts and deferred compensation, stock plans that vest over years, an inheritance one spouse means to keep separate, and an estate where one spouse handled all the money while the other signed where asked.

Any one of these changes the work. Two or three together are why these cases need to be prepared differently from the start: the decree you sign has to describe every asset precisely enough that a bank, a plan administrator and a title company will all act on it.

Community, separate, and the tracing problem

Separate property is what you brought into the marriage, plus anything you received by gift or inheritance during it. Everything else is presumed community, and the presumption is broad.

Proving something is separate is called tracing: the closing documents, statements and dates that follow an asset from before the marriage to now. When separate money has been mixed into joint accounts for years, tracing gets harder. Harder is not impossible, but it is paperwork, and it is exactly the work worth starting early.

One detail that catches people out: the income an asset throws off, the rent, dividends or interest, is normally community even when the asset itself is separate. If you signed a prenuptial or marital agreement, it may already answer some of these questions, and it is the first document we read.

Valuing a business nobody plans to sell

A company does not have a price tag until someone has to buy the other person out. Getting to that number means valuing the business as it actually runs: its books, its debts, what depends on the owner personally and what does not.

In most cases the practical route is a valuation professional both sides can live with, rather than two duelling experts and a courtroom fight about methodology. Our job is to make the numbers legible, test the assumptions behind them, and keep the business running normally while the case is pending.

The same discipline applies to stock plans and deferred compensation: what has vested, what has not, and what the decree should say about each.

Retirement accounts and the orders behind them

Dividing a 401(k) or a pension takes its own court order, separate from the decree, written precisely enough for the plan administrator to accept it. Administrators reject sloppy orders, and a rejected order means going back to court to fix it. We draft these to be accepted the first time.

IRAs move under different rules, and the timing of a transfer matters. None of this is difficult when it is planned; nearly all of it is expensive when it is an afterthought.

The house, the lake place, and everything on paper

Real property usually resolves one of three ways: it is sold and the proceeds divided, one of you keeps it and the other is made whole from elsewhere in the estate, or it is kept for a time, with the decree spelling out exactly who pays what until it is sold.

Whichever way it goes, the decree and the deed have to match, and refinancing deadlines have to be realistic. For Lake Travis families the biggest asset often sits on the water, and dividing it well matters more than dividing it fast.

Private by design

A contested divorce file is a public record. For a family with a business, that can mean revenue, debts and buyout numbers sitting in a file anyone can request.

There is another way to run it. What is said in mediation is confidential and generally inadmissible under Texas law, and a mediated settlement agreement that meets the Family Code’s requirements is binding once signed. The final decree can then say what it must, and no more.

The 60-day waiting period still applies, as it does to every Texas divorce. Used well, those weeks are where the valuation and the negotiation actually happen. Where both of you want a structured, out-of-court process with your own counsel, collaborative law is built for exactly that.

How we approach it

You work with one attorney who reads every statement herself, not a file passed between associates. Victoria has spent twenty years in Texas family courtrooms, which is precisely why her advice runs toward settling these cases privately and precisely: she knows what a trial costs, in money and in disclosure.

You will get plain answers about what is strong, what is weak, and what a court would likely do with your facts. Fees and strategy are discussed at the first conversation.

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