Legal Question in Business Law in Virginia

No. There are two possibilities. During the divorce, ownership of property by both spouses should be decided. Who owns the business should be decided by the divorce court or the voluntary property settlement.

But this leaves two possibilities:

If the husband owns the business alone, then the confidential and proprietary information of the business belongs to the husband. She would not have a right to take the customer list or other trade secrets and give it away. Customer lists and related information are considered proprietary information. (Warning though: If customer information is readily available publicly, it might not be confidential at all. The fact that one company has information customers and potential customers cannot stop another company from taking PUBLIC information from a PUBLIC source. But they definitely cannot take the customer lists or information or similar information from one company and give it to another without permission.)

The other possibility is that BOTH spouses own the business equally.

You would think that if BOTH spouses are equal owners, then they can EACH do whatever they want with the business. They are an owner. So the wife would have the same rights and access to the business' proprietary information as the husband / founder would have.

But what changes this situation is that each would have a "fiduciary duty" or duty of loyalty to the other partner in the business. So even if the spouse is an equal owner in the business, NEITHER owner can act out of disloyalty to the other business partner (in terms of busienss activities.)

I think it would be very important to clarify who exactly owns the business after the divorce.

For example, if both spouses are equal owners of the business, then the business must treat teh wife under a fiduciary duty as well. It could be a problem if the husband were not fulfilling his fiduciary duty but demanding it be honored by the co-owner.

So they have to figure out who the actual owners of the business are, officially.