Your Business After Divorce Promise to love, honor and cherish your business--even if you share it with your ex-spouse.

In "Your Business," you read about married couples running businesses together. Well, things don't always work out. In this column, you'll read about divorced couples operating businesses together. Although most experts agree the chances of a husband-and-wife-owned-and-operated business remaining intact after a divorce are unlikely, the events leading up to each divorce are different. And some couples do make it work.

"[It's] not uncommon," qualifies Ivan Lansberg, a family business consultant in New Haven, Connecticut. This is especially true if motivation and trust are present.

First, you need to have, or think you're going to have, a successful business. It serves as the motivation to hammer out a working relationship. "Nobody wants a successful asset to slip away," says Kay Wakefield, a partner in the Portland, Oregon, law firm Wakefield McCobb P.C.