Return Engagement

After Yvette Betancourt and Martyn Verster divorced and sold the transportation business they'd started, the last thing they expected was to grow another startup. But Betancourt, 36, decided to start a real estate title and escrow office. And Verster, 50, an attorney, had experience doing real estate legal work.

"Though the marriage had not worked, the business had always worked," Betancourt says. So in August 2004, three years after ending their 13-year marriage, they opened The Closing Company Title and Escrow Services in Miami. Today, the company employs six and 2005 revenues are projected at $1 million.

Work is peaceful, despite the fact that they share two children and are each involved in new relationships. "The things that we argued about when we were married don't entirely disappear," says Betancourt, the firm's president. "But by facing the reality that the only things that matter are the business and the children, it's made everything easier."

This article was originally published in the April 2005 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: Return Engagement.