Over the years, I’ve tried to avoid writing about big money divorces like this. I’ve just been a bit prudish about something that is at best sad and at worst tragic. I always think of the children. But there is certainly plenty of practical advice to be gleaned from such an emotional issue, which is why lawyers and financial planners should tune in to the salacious gossip.

What little is known — or can be logically assumed — about the Murdoch divorce provides lessons for people with far less money.

There are at least four areas in the Murdoch divorce that other affluent people need to consider if they find themselves served with divorce papers.

AGREEMENTS In the Murdoch case, there is reportedly a prenuptial agreement and two postnuptial agreements that modify the original contract.

Ilan Hirschfeld, national leader of the marital dissolution practice group at Marcum, an accounting firm, said postnuptial agreements generally solidify the prenuptial agreement and make the separation of assets cleaner. But if there is only a prenuptial agreement and it is very old, he would use forensic accounting to challenge it.

“If I’m representing the Mrs. and she’s not happy because her husband is making 10 times what he was making in the beginning, I’ll go back and say, ‘Did you disclose all the assets?’ or ‘Was she properly represented?’ ” he said.

David Aronson, a founding partner of Aronson, Mayefsky Sloan, took the opposite position. He said people who entered into prenuptial agreements lightly or without proper counsel could be sorely disappointed.

“Prenuptial agreements are routinely enforced in New York, even if they appear to be bad deals,” he said, adding that the few recent cases in which they were overturned were “still exceptions to the rule.”

One type of prenuptial agreement that could draw more scrutiny, Mr. Aronson said, is one drawn up to protect the earnings of the higher-earning spouse when both people were younger. “That’s a very bad deal for the spouse who is never going to earn a lot of money,” he said.

ASSETS Dividing assets between spouses is rarely as simple as deciding to split it 50-50 — or even 60-40. A lot depends on what kinds of assets are involved.

Appraisers and lawyers draw a distinction between passive and active assets. A passive asset would be a house or a stock portfolio, but not all of them can be parceled out.

Jason M. Katz, a private wealth adviser at UBS Wealth Management, said a municipal bond portfolio could be tricky to divide without slighting one spouse because bonds have different maturities and credit quality.

More difficult are investments in hedge funds and private equity. He said couples would have to wait until the next withdrawal period to get their money from a hedge fund, but with private equity they did not have the same option and could be in it for years, depending on how long the fund holds on to its investments. A way around this could involve one spouse trading away rights to it for something else, like a beach house.

A business, on the other hand, is an active investment, and the percentage a spouse is entitled to depends on how much he or she contributed to the business.

In the case of anyone who enters a marriage with an existing business, as Mr. Murdoch did with News Corporation, the calculation of what percentage of the business Mrs. Murdoch could be owed starts on the day they were married and ends with the value of the company on the day they filed for divorce. This is tricky: She traveled with Mr. Murdoch on business, particularly to her native China, and famously smacked a guy trying to throw a pie in his face. But what could she or any one person contribute to the success of a global company like News Corporation?

The calculation changes if the business was started while the couple was married. Mr. Hirchfeld said that a spouse of a business owner who stayed home and raised the children is generally awarded somewhere between 30 to 35 percent of the business.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/10/your-money/from-a-divorce-in-the-affluent-class-lessons-for-all.html?partner=rss&emc=rss