A single email exchange between divorcing spouses triggered one of 2024’s most consequential rulings for valuation professionals, CPAs, and divorce attorneys. In Shilling v. Shilling, a $605,000 post-divorce buyout fell apart when the parties could not agree on what was actually being sold the LLC membership interest or the commercial building owned by the LLC and when the husband later tried to walk away by claiming that unresolved tax implications made the deal unenforceable. The Delaware Supreme Court disagreed. It held that the parties’ email correspondence formed a binding contract despite the imprecise terminology and the absence of tax provisions, calling the husband’s late-stage concerns “an afterthought brought on by buyer’s remorse.”

Professor Kelly Lise Murray, JD uses this case to illustrate how informal negotiations around entity-held real estate can expose clients and advisors to enormous risk. She explains why asset classification must be clarified at the outset, how courts evaluate “material terms,” and why email-based acceptances such as “Yes. We can do that.” create enforceable obligations even when parties believe a formal settlement stipulation will follow. Murray also highlights how the 2017 Ancillary Order’s 55/45 income split persisted for six years because the parties could not sell or transfer their LLC-held property, and why the husband’s cost-basis concerns emerged only after he calculated he could earn more by investing in bonds.

For listeners working in divorce financial planning, valuation, tax strategy, or complex marital property division, Murray offers a rare inside look at the technical missteps that escalated a routine buyout into Supreme Court litigation. She shows how better coordination between valuation experts, CPAs, and legal counsel could have prevented every major issue in Shilling, and why professionals must document asset classification, tax allocation, and basis considerations before clients strike deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars via email.

In Oakes v. Oakes (Ohio App. 2024), a divorcing spouse’s construction company became the center of one of the most dramatic valuation gaps in recent marital dissolution cases. Three experts offered opinions ranging from $27 million to $108 million on the value of the husband’s 69.3% C-Corp interest. The wife’s expert relied on multi-year financials and optimistic growth projections to reach a $108.8 million valuation. The husband’s experts countered with valuations around $27–30 million based on higher company-specific risk adjustments, conservative growth rates, and the exclusion of non-recurring PPP pandemic funds. Faced with an $80 million spread and openly acknowledging its lack of expertise in “the numerous factors” required to value a complex construction company, the trial court adopted the wife’s methodology but modified two of her assumptions, arriving at an $80.18 million valuation.

The appellate court upheld much of the trial court’s reasoning but identified significant gaps requiring remand. It questioned whether the growth projections properly accounted for the $10.3 million in working capital needed to sustain them, whether the valuation included an adequate marketability discount for a closely-held company, and how interdependent valuation assumptions become distorted when courts alter isolated components of an expert’s model. These unresolved issues mean the valuation may drop by tens of millions once working capital needs and marketability discounts are fully addressed.

Professor Kelly Lise Murray, JD uses Oakes to illustrate why business valuation disputes in divorce are uniquely vulnerable to massive swings in expert opinion. She examines the technical battlegrounds where valuations diverge most sharply, including the use of multi-year versus single-year financials, the dramatic impact of company-specific risk adjustments ranging from 0.19% to 4%, the proper tax rates when QBID deductions apply, and the challenge of projecting growth when COVID-era performance either distorts or conceals the company’s actual trajectory. Murray explains why trial courts cannot “split the difference” or cobble together preferred elements from competing reports, and what it means for judges to be “restricted to the valuations in evidence” when those valuations rest on interconnected assumptions about discount rates, growth projections, and tax treatment.

For podcast hosts focused on business valuation, divorce finance, or expert witness strategy, this conversation offers a rare inside look at the technical missteps that transformed a valuation dispute into a multi-million-dollar remand. Murray shows why experts must quantify working capital needs, explicitly address marketability discounts, and clearly explain the interdependence of their assumptions before judges are forced to choose between wildly divergent numbers with no reliable middle ground.

What happens when a spouse sets up a $2 million irrevocable life insurance trust during marriage, funds it entirely with marital income, and then files for divorce? Depending on which state you’re in, the other spouse might walk away with nothing or half the value. Courts across America reach completely opposite conclusions on nearly identical trusts, turning Crummey powers and “irrevocable” labels into high-stakes landmines. Professor Kelly Lise Murray, JD, takes listeners inside the battleground where estate planning, tax strategy, and divorce law collide, revealing why timing, funding, and beneficial interests can turn a supposedly untouchable trust into divisible marital property. From Maryland to Missouri, from Vermont to Florida, she exposes the surprising ways courts dissect ownership, control, and economic substance, and why the difference of a zip code can cost millions. 

Murray digs into the mechanics that make these trusts a legal and financial minefield, showing how even carefully drafted “irrevocable” structures can unravel under divorce scrutiny. Crummey withdrawal powers, designed to qualify gifts for tax exclusion, create fleeting beneficial interests that some courts treat as divisible marital property, while others ignore them entirely. Courts analyze five key factors: source of funding, timing, control, beneficial interest, and third-party creation but apply them inconsistently, leaving multi-million-dollar trusts hanging in legal limbo. She walks listeners through landmark cases where nearly identical trusts produced opposite results, revealing how a spouse’s premium payments, trustee powers, or even minor lapses in notice can shift millions in value from protected asset to marital estate. The stakes are enormous: for high-net-worth couples, a single clause or procedural misstep can mean the difference between preserving generational wealth or exposing it to division, making this a must-know battleground for anyone navigating estate planning or divorce strategy.

For years, structures like Domestic Asset Protection Trusts, Family Limited Partnerships, and LLCs have been promoted as reliable shields for wealth. But recent cases under the Uniform Voidable Transactions Act reveal a different reality. Courts are increasingly willing to look past formal structures when the facts suggest hindrance, delay, or fraud, exposing clients to clawbacks through fraudulent transfer claims, charging-order workarounds, veil-piercing, and bankruptcy scrutiny.

Professor Kelly Lise Murray, JD, helps advisors understand where these structures fail and why. Drawing on real litigation, she explains the “badges of fraud” courts rely on, the governance mistakes that unravel even sophisticated plans, and the solvency and separateness documentation judges now expect to see. For wealth managers, accountants, and financial professionals, this conversation offers both a warning and a roadmap: protection only works when the legal and factual foundations are sound.

What happens when spouses place millions in marital assets, including the family home, into an “irrevocable” trust that quietly strips one spouse of all rights if the marriage ends? Professor Kelly Lise Murray, JD, explains why these litigated cases are essential reading for estate planners, divorce attorneys, and wealth advisors who work with high-net-worth families. They highlight three major vulnerabilities: how conflicting trust language can effectively turn an irrevocable trust into a revocable one, why anyone who contributes property is treated as a settlor even if they never sign the document, and how choice-of-law clauses fail when they violate a state’s public policy on equitable distribution.

Murray skillfully walks listeners through the drafting mistakes and structural gaps that took routine planning and escalated it into Supreme Court-level litigation. She shows how broad amendment powers allow settlers to add revocation clauses later, how simple property transfers can create settler status under the Uniform Trust Code, and how courts decide when public policy overrides trust terms that were intended to shield assets during divorce. For podcasts focused on estate planning, divorce finance, or trust litigation, this topic offers practical guidance and cautionary lessons, showing how one poorly drafted sentence can threaten generational wealth and why trust terms, contributor status, and beneficiary rights must be aligned from the start.