When you have worked hard and taken careful steps to build a life that allows you and your family to live comfortably, divorce can feel like a wrecking ball. That’s because New Mexico’s family law system, and most of the lawyers who operate in it, treat every divorcee like a W2 employee. 

There’s an expectation that you can go in, split the financial baby (and time spent with any literal babies!), and walk away from the relationship with relative ease. But if you have complex or high-value assets, this isn’t just impractical, it’s needlessly destructive. 

Couples with extensive assets need a divorce attorney who can do more than divide by two if they want to move forward with stability, dignity, and confidence. As a former family business owner whose life was completely changed by divorce, Attorney Bob Matteucci understands this better than most. Bob and the rest of the Matteucci Family Law team work with business owners, professionals, and couples with substantial or complex assets who want to protect their wealth and secure their family’s future, not fight about who gets what.

What Makes a Divorce “High-Asset”

There’s no dollar amount that turns a “regular” divorce into a high-asset divorce. What makes a high-asset divorce different is its complexity. 

When the marital estate includes things that are hard to value, hard to divide, or both, getting divorced is going to be a challenge. Common examples include closely held businesses, professional practices, commercial or rental real estate, pensions and deferred compensation, stock-based pay, and assets that mix property from before the marriage with value accumulated during it.

These assets themselves make divorce complex, but so too does New Mexico’s community property law, which says property that is acquired during the marriage (or that increases in value during the marriage) should generally be divided 50/50 at divorce. 

No matter whose name is on the title, or who was actually running the business, equal division is the legal starting point. But “equal” doesn’t have to mean selling everything and splitting the proceeds. And for most of Bob’s clients, it shouldn’t.

Protecting Family-Owned Business

Whether you own an HVAC company, a restaurant group, a construction firm, a retail operation, or you have a portfolio of rental properties, you’re likely wondering how you are supposed to divide up what you have built without completely destroying your family business. 

Some lawyers will tell you you can’t. And if judges had it their way, you would be forced to sell everything off and simply split the proceeds. But as someone who was inspired to go to law school after realizing divorce meant he would be the fourth and final generation to run his family’s retail shoe business, Bob Matteucci knows exactly how unpalatable these “solutions” are. He knows there are other options out there, and he is not afraid to wade deep into the financial weeds to find them. 

Picture a couple who have spent twenty years building a commercial landscaping company in Albuquerque. One spouse runs operations and manages the crews. The other handled the books for years before stepping back to raise their kids. The company’s building is owned by a separate LLC that the couple also owns, and the business pays that LLC rent every month. Selling the company would wipe out most of its value and put thirty employees at risk. Neither spouse wants that.

A workable solution might have one spouse keep the operating company while the other keeps the real estate LLC. The monthly rent then becomes a reliable income stream for the spouse who no longer works in the business. Any remaining gap could be closed with a structured buyout, retirement assets, or spousal support (aka alimony). 

This kind of arrangement only works if someone models it carefully. That means testing the rent against market rates, making sure the business can afford the payments, and accounting for the tax consequences on both sides. This isn’t the easy way to do things, but it is often the only way to do them if keeping the business going is important to you and your family’s financial security and well-being.

Professional Practices

Physicians, dentists, veterinarians, attorneys, accountants, and consultants face a similar set of challenges when it comes time to divide their assets. A professional practice is often worth a great deal, but much of that value depends on one person continuing to show up and do the work. You can’t hand half of a surgical practice to a spouse who isn’t a surgeon.

But putting a dollar value on the practice and splitting that in half is tricky as well. It’s worth is measured not just by looking at accounts receivable and the equipment it owns, but by its goodwill. Patient or client relationships, reputation, and referral streams that keep revenue coming in are often worth more than you might expect. New Mexico courts have long treated the goodwill of a professional practice as property that can be valued and divided. How that goodwill is measured can move the final number significantly, and it’s one of the areas where a careful, well-supervised valuation pays for itself.

Practices with partners add another layer of difficulty. Partnership and shareholder agreements often contain buy-sell provisions, valuation formulas, and restrictions on transferring ownership. Those terms don’t automatically control the value in a divorce, but they matter, and they have to be reconciled with the settlement so the professional spouse isn’t put in breach of obligations to their partners. 

The goal for most professional couples is straightforward: the practicing spouse keeps the practice intact, and the other spouse receives fair value in another form, on a timeline the practice’s cash flow can support.

Real Estate

New Mexico isn’t known as the “Land of Enchantment” for nothing. The beauty of this land is what has drawn people to the Albuquerque area for hundreds of years. So, it’s not surprising that land plays a role in many high-asset divorces. 

Whether you own a single family home that has significantly appreciated in value during your marriage, vacation property, rental houses, commercial buildings, raw land, or property held inside LLCs and partnerships, all of that real estate must be divided at divorce. 

Once again, physical division is not necessary if other arrangements can be made. This means thinking about not only what each property is worth but:

  • What the tax implications would be if certain real estate is sold or ownership is otherwise transferred
  • Whether a mortgage will be necessary, and if so what interest rate is available 
  • The future earning potential of rental or commercial property
  • What other assets the couple has the could be given to the spouse who does not get a particular piece of property

Looking at the whole picture means two properties with the same market value can be worth very different amounts to the spouse who ends up owning them.

Retirement Assets 

Retirement accounts are often among a couple’s largest assets, and they’re easy to undervalue or mishandle during a divorce.

The first thing you have to realize is that not all dollars are equal. A $500,000 pre-tax 401(k) is not worth the same as $500,000 in home equity or a brokerage account, because income tax will eventually be owed on the 401(k). Good settlements account for that difference instead of trading assets at face value.

The way an account is divided matters too. Employer plans like 401(k)s and pensions generally require a court order, often called a QDRO, to split them without early-withdrawal penalties or immediate taxes. Federal pensions, New Mexico state plans, and military retirement each have their own rules and order requirements. A settlement that looks right on paper can fail in practice if the orders aren’t drafted correctly.

Deferred Compensation

If you or your spouse have a job in the c-suite, or work in tech, finance, sales, or any other industry that uses performance incentives, your divorce is going to have to address the value of potential future benefits earned during the marriage. 

Many couples underestimate the complexity here until they see the numbers laid out. For example, a single grant of restricted stock units (RSUs) can influence support calculations, long-term retirement planning, and even the timing of the divorce itself. 


Compensation that was earned during the marriage is different from that which was already earned but grew in value during the marriage. And this is different from stocks that will vest later, which may not actually vest unless certain conditions are met. 

How Child Support is Calculated when High-Asset Couples Divorce

Most New Mexico families calculate their child support payments by plugging a few numbers into a state-provided worksheet and going with whatever it spits out. This is another part of the divorce ecosystem that works well for W2 employees, but isn’t a good fit for people whose cash flow varies from year to year due to changing levels of business or investment income. 

That’s why many high-asset couples opt for negotiated support agreements instead. Rather than agreeing to some state-mandated number, they calculate support based on the real cost of raising their child. This allows them to take things like private school tuition, travel, extracurriculars, medical and dental care, health insurance, college savings, and lifestyle continuity into account. 

New Mexico family court judges typically approve these “off-guideline” support agreements as long as they seem reasonable. And reasonable here means reasonable for your family, especially since the state did away with caps on child support payments.

As your attorney, Bob Matteucci can help ensure support arrangements align with your values and financial reality, offering stability and fairness without unnecessary rigidity.

Spousal Support Payments in High-Asset Divorces 

In a high-asset divorce, spousal support payments (often called alimony) often serve as a bargaining chip. Instead of dividing a company or selling real property, parties might agree to use support payments to: 

  • offset the value of a business or other difficult-to-divide assets; 
  • use a lump-sum payment to ensure the marital estate is split 50/50; or 
  • structure support in a way that accounts for unpredictable future income that is tied to work done or investments made during the marriage. 

There is no set formula for calculating spousal support payments, so this is an area where high-net-worth couples have a great deal of flexibility to negotiate.

Protecting Your Privacy

Whether you are concerned about your reputation, your family’s safety, or your business’s future, keeping your personal information out of public view is important. 

While it is impossible to hide the fact that you are getting divorced thanks to New Mexico’s open court records, there are steps Attorney Matteucci can help you take to protect your privacy:

  • Unless you choose to litigate, the nitty-gritty details of your divorce settlement will not need to be aired in open court. Cases resolved through mediation or collaborative divorce keep sensitive financial information out of open court.
  • Agreements reached between you and your soon-to-be-former spouse can include confidentiality clauses. 
  • Under very limited circumstances, court filings can be made under seal. 

Keeping information about your relationship status and family affairs as quiet as possible can provide some comfort as you navigate this difficult time in your life.

Strategic Case Planning: Start With Where You’re Going

Bob’s approach to high-asset divorce is built around a simple idea: you can’t design a good settlement until you know what you want your future to look like.

Early in the case, he helps clients answer questions like these:

  • What does each spouse realistically need to live on, and where will that money come from?
  • Who is best positioned to own and run each asset going forward?
  • If there are children, how does the financial plan support the parenting plan?
  • How will taxes, debt, and cash flow look under different ways of dividing things?

In many of the families he works with, the business or other assets being divided will remain the family’s main cash-flow engine long after the divorce is final. It may fund spousal support. It may pay private school tuition. It may be what one spouse’s buyout payments come from for years to come. Both spouses usually understand that a division that threatens the family’s ability to fund their future isn’t a win for either of them.

From there, the case moves through a series of practical stages. First comes gathering and organizing the financial picture. Ideally, this information is voluntarily exchanged. However, it is sometimes necessary to seek a court order or bring in outside experts like forensic accountants and appraisers to get all the needed information. 

Next come valuations and financial modeling, where different settlement structures are tested against real numbers. Then comes negotiation, whether through mediation, collaborative divorce, or traditional attorney-to-attorney settlement talks. Once an agreement is struck, it is approved by the judge and the work of implementing it begins (retitling, refinancing, updating operating agreements, etc.). 

How long all of this takes depends mostly on how quickly the financial information comes together, but having a vision for the future keeps everyone focused on moving forward even when negotiations are tricky. 

Serving Families with Dignity & Compassion

If you’re considering divorce, or are already certain it’s the right move, your next step should be contacting a seasoned family law attorney like Bob Matteucci who appreciates the concerns you have for your family and your finances. Even in a high-asset divorce, there’s no reason you should be forced to choose between protecting what you’ve built and protecting your family. With the right plan, you can do both.

Bob brings a business owner’s perspective, a family law attorney’s judgment, and the personal understanding of someone who has been through the divorce process himself to every case. Please contact him to set up a meeting and discuss your case.