Family Law Case Issues - Essay Example

An issue arises when the individual possessing the CPA license is an employee of a firm and not the owner or partner. In that situation, the prospective earnings are valued as are any other wages. The professional license itself would not have separate value. However, if the license was acquired during the marriage to the other partner’s detriment, the court would likely seek to equalize the benefit accrued to the licensed partner.

The court has adopted the rules about the dissolution of business partnerships to apply to the division and distribution of property in divorce cases. See Gussin v. Gussin, 73 Haw. 470, 483–84, 836 P.2d 484, 481 (1992). “Under general partnership law, each partner is entitled to be repaid his contributions to the partnership property, whether made by way of capital or advances”. Tougas v. Tougas, 76 Hawai‘i 19, 27, 868 P.2d 437, 445 (1994) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Then, absent “agreement to the contrary, ‘partners share equally in the profits of their partnership, even though they may have contributed unequally to capital or services’ (quoting Gardner v. Gardner, 8 Haw. App 461, 464–65, 810 P.2d 239, 242 (1991)) (internal citation omitted).

There is no established market value in the present case in the sense that there were several transactions of the same or similar article, the consensus of which reflects the price at which willing buyers and sellers would act. The fair market value here is synonymous with the investment value of the trade secret; that is, what an investor judges he should pay for the return he foresees by owning the process, taking into account the facts, circumstances, and information that is available at the time.

Applying the fair market valuation to a professional license does not yield an equitable result beyond its ability to add value to the marital estate in the form of a business interest or potential earnings. Thus the license itself has no intrinsic value.