A medical practice, a dental surgery, a firm of solicitors or accountants: professional practices are among the strangest assets a divorce meets, because so much of their value is the professional. Valuing an asset that walks out the door each evening takes its own approach.
What a Practice Is Worth
Less than its turnover suggests and more than its owner claims, usually. The valuation questions: what would the practice fetch from a buyer who isn’t the professional — the patient list, the premises, the contracts, the staff — versus how much of the income simply is the qualification working? Partnership stakes add layers: what the partnership deed says about exit and valuation, capital accounts, and the difference between profit share and the drawings actually taken. As ever, the fights live in the inputs — and the practice’s accounts tell the story properly instructed accountants know how to read.
Income Is the Real Engine
In most professional-practice divorces, the capital value matters less than the income stream: a strong professional income is the natural engine of maintenance, and the analysis looks at real earning capacity — including where drawings have been conveniently modest lately, or income routed through structures. The other side of the same coin: the spouse whose career was set aside so the practice could be built has that cost counted — section 20 weighs the effect of marital responsibilities on earning capacity explicitly, and decades of it are provision’s legitimate business.
Discretion note: professionals live on reputation, and divorce’s privacy matters accordingly — the in-camera rule keeps proceedings out of public view, most cases settle without a contested hearing, and this practice is built for discretion besides. The privacy guide has the full picture; the Business Owner Divorce page carries the machinery.
A practice in the picture — yours or your spouse’s? One confidential call: 01 5827148.