Divorce is never easy, but here's how to navigate it with your business in mind. Photo via Pexels

We all hoped that, once the pandemic had waned, we would return to a more normal, predictable economy, but it seems that we are confronted now with even more unpredictability in what economists have dubbed the “uncertainty economy.” Very few people are able to choose the best time to divorce on the basis of finances, but the current environment can make evaluating the worth of stock options, a closely held business or even real estate highly challenging.

For one thing, the pandemic itself lingers. Some businesses—bicycle manufacturers and bicycle shops, for instance—experienced boom times during the pandemic. Other businesses—restaurants and businesses at tourist locations, for instance—suffered greatly, limped along, or even closed for good. Now, instead of settling into a steady hum again, our economy is coping with inflation, the rising cost of labor, supply chain tangles, and the ripple effects of the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia. The situation is still fluid. What works today may not work well tomorrow. What doesn’t look promising today may be much more successful tomorrow.

In a divorce case in which significant financial assets are involved that are community property, a family lawyer will bring in a trusted professional business or property evaluator—whatever is appropriate for the particular situation. Evaluating a closely held business is often the most difficult issue—more difficult than, say, dividing the value of real estate or stock in a publicly traded company. Three different methods can be applied to a business valuation: the market approach, the income approach, and the asset approach. The business evaluator will judge which to use, singly or in combination.

Much will depend on the ownership agreement as expressed in formation documents, whether the owners be investors, business partners or family members. These documents generally provide in some way for what will occur in the case of a divorce or a death. Generally, co-owners do not want to have to deal with an inexperienced ex-spouse or widow/widower who abruptly becomes part-owner of the business or practice (in the case of a doctor or lawyer in a partnership). The spouse who is in the business also has to consider tax issues and his or her fiduciary duty to other owners. And courts are not allowed to simply give corporate assets or debts to one party or the other in a divorce.

Generally the spouse involved in the closely held business will have three choices available: continue to own the business with the ex-spouse (maybe they already work together and have a decent working relationship), sell the business and divide the profits, or offset the value of the business ownership with other property if other assets are available. In Texas, “personal goodwill” as part of a business is not community property. It attaches to the person who created it. But the business may have “enterprise goodwill”--the value of the business apart from the individual owner--which may be community property.

None of this addresses the issue of the fluidity in the current economy. Divorce agreements can allow for that in the form of contingency agreements. For example, a business owner may be dealing with a specific potential liability. The divorce agreement may provide that, for a given period of time, the business owner is allowed to set aside a certain amount of money to address the liability if it arises. If it does not arise, after a certain period of time, the money will be divided between the two former spouses. Or let’s say a business asset with limited liability or future involvement that is part of community property may be sold in the future. A divorce agreement can provide that, if the asset is sold, the profits will be shared. Clawback provisions can be included, as well, to provide for future adjustments. This will require extraordinary drafting skill.

There is another option as well and that is to wait for more settled times. But the two spouses may have radically opposed views as to the “best” time for the divorce. The spouse who earns less may want to divorce when community property values are at their highest; the other spouse will want to split when community property values are at their lowest. In either case, they would do well to consult experts in family law and business valuation experts before deciding on when to set a divorce in motion.

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Susan Myres is a Houston-based, board-certified family law attorney at Myres & Associates and has over 35 years of experience.

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Greentown Labs names Lawson Gow as its new Houston leader

head of hou

Greentown Labs has named Lawson Gow as its Head of Houston.

Gow is the founder of The Cannon, a coworking space with seven locations in the Houston area, with additional partner spaces. He also recently served as managing partner at Houston-based investment and advisory firm Helium Capital. Gow is the son of David Gow, founder of Energy Capital's parent company, Gow Media.

According to Greentown, Gow will "enhance the founder experience, cultivate strategic partnerships, and accelerate climatetech solutions" in his new role.

“I couldn’t be more excited to join Greentown at this critical moment for the energy transition,” Gow said in a news release. “Greentown has a fantastic track record of supporting entrepreneurs in Houston, Boston, and beyond, and I am eager to keep advancing our mission in the energy transition capital of the world.”

Gow has also held analyst, strategy and advising roles since graduating from Rice University.

“We are thrilled to welcome Lawson to our leadership team,” Georgina Campbell Flatter, CEO of Greentown Labs, added in the release. “Lawson has spent his career building community and championing entrepreneurs, and we look forward to him deepening Greentown’s support of climate and energy startups as our Head of Houston.”

Gow is the latest addition to a series of new hires at Greentown Labs following a leadership shakeup.

Flatter was named as the organization's new CEO in February, replacing Kevin Dutt, Greentown’s interim CEO, who replaced Kevin Knobloch after he announced that he would step down in July 2024 after less than a year in the role.

Greentown also named Naheed Malik its new CFO in January.

Timmeko Moore Love was named the first Houston general manager and senior vice president of Greentown Labs. According to LinkedIn, she left the role in January.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston foundation grants $27M to support Texas chemistry research

fresh funding

Houston-based The Welch Foundation has doled out $27 million in its latest round of grants for chemical research, equipment and postdoctoral fellowships.

According to a June announcement, $25.5 million was allocated for the foundation's longstanding research grants, which provide $100,000 per year in funding for three years to full-time, regular tenure or tenure-track faculty members in Texas. The foundation made 85 grants to faculty at 16 Texas institutions for 2025, including:

  • Michael I. Jacobs, assistant professor in the chemistry and biochemistry department at Texas State University, who is investigating the structure and thermodynamics of intrinsically disordered proteins, which could "reveal clues about how life began," according to the foundation.
  • Kendra K. Frederick, assistant professor in the biophysics department at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, who is studying a protein linked to Parkinson’s disease.
  • Jennifer S. Brodbelt, professor in chemistry at The University of Texas at Austin, who is testing a theory called full replica symmetry breaking (fullRSB) on glass-like materials, which has implications for complex systems in physics, chemistry and biology.

Additional funding will be allocated to the Welch Postdoctoral Fellows of the Life Sciences Research Foundation. The program provides three-year fellowships to recent PhD graduates to support clinical research careers in Texas. Two fellows from Rice University and Baylor University will receive $100,000 annually for three years.

The Welch Foundation also issued $975,000 through its equipment grant program to 13 institutions to help them develop "richer laboratory experience(s)." The universities matched funds of $352,346.

Since 1954, the Welch Foundation has contributed over $1.1 billion for Texas-nurtured advancements in chemistry through research grants, endowed chairs and other chemistry-related ventures. Last year, the foundation granted more than $40.5 million in academic research grants, equipment grants and fellowships.

“Through funding basic chemical research, we are actively investing in the future of humankind,” Adam Kuspa, president of The Welch Foundation, said the news release. “We are proud to support so many talented researchers across Texas and continue to be inspired by the important work they complete every day.”

New Houston biotech co. developing capsules for hard-to-treat tumors

biotech breakthroughs

Houston company Sentinel BioTherapeutics has made promising headway in cancer immunotherapy for patients who don’t respond positively to more traditional treatments. New biotech venture creation studio RBL LLC (pronounced “rebel”) recently debuted the company at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago.

Rima Chakrabarti is a neurologist by training. Though she says she’s “passionate about treating the brain,” her greatest fervor currently lies in leading Sentinel as its CEO. Sentinel is RBL’s first clinical venture, and Chakrabarti also serves as cofounder and managing partner of the venture studio.

The team sees an opportunity to use cytokine interleukin-2 (IL-2) capsules to fight many solid tumors for which immunotherapy hasn't been effective in the past. “We plan to develop a pipeline of drugs that way,” Chakrabarti says.

This may all sound brand-new, but Sentinel’s research goes back years to the work of Omid Veiseh, director of the Rice Biotechnology Launch Pad (RBLP). Through another, now-defunct company called Avenge Bio, Veiseh and Paul Wotton — also with RBLP and now RBL’s CEO and chairman of Sentinel — invested close to $45 million in capital toward their promising discovery.

From preclinical data on studies in mice, Avenge was able to manufacture its platform focused on ovarian cancer treatments and test it on 14 human patients. “That's essentially opened the door to understanding the clinical efficacy of this drug as well as it's brought this to the attention of the FDA, such that now we're able to continue that conversation,” says Chakrabarti. She emphasizes the point that Avenge’s demise was not due to the science, but to the company's unsuccessful outsourcing to a Massachusetts management team.

“They hadn't analyzed a lot of the data that we got access to upon the acquisition,” explains Chakrabarti. “When we analyzed the data, we saw this dose-dependent immune activation, very specific upregulation of checkpoints on T cells. We came to understand how effective this agent could be as an immune priming agent in a way that Avenge Bio hadn't been developing this drug.”

Chakrabarti says that Sentinel’s phase II trials are coming soon. They’ll continue their previous work with ovarian cancer, but Chakrabarti says that she also believes that the IL-2 capsules will be effective in the treatment of endometrial cancer. There’s also potential for people with other cancers located in the peritoneal cavity, such as colorectal cancer, gastrointestinal cancer and even primary peritoneal carcinomatosis.

“We're delivering these capsules into the peritoneal cavity and seeing both the safety as well as the immune activation,” Chakrabarti says. “We're seeing that up-regulation of the checkpoint that I mentioned. We're seeing a strong safety signal. This drug was very well-tolerated by patients where IL-2 has always had a challenge in being a well-tolerated drug.”

When phase II will take place is up to the success of Sentinel’s fundraising push. What we do know is that it will be led by Amir Jazaeri at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Part of the goal this summer is also to create an automated cell manufacturing process and prove that Sentinel can store its product long-term.

“This isn’t just another cell therapy,” Chakrabarti says.

"Sentinel's cytokine factory platform is the breakthrough technology that we believe has the potential to define the next era of cancer treatment," adds Wotton.