When Running a Businesses Crashes Into Your Personal Life: Some Things I Learned About California's Legal System

I've covered business news across Europe for years now, and honestly? Never imagined I'd end up writing about personal legal stuff.

Last month I talked to 47 executives who'd moved their operations to California between 2023 and 2025. During these conversations something caught me off guard: 19 of them brought up dealing with divorce in california while managing these massive international business moves. That's around 40% of everyone I interviewed.

The Part Nobody Mentions in Board Meetings

You won't find this discussed in quarterly reports or earnings calls. But when you're setting up a European subsidiary in Silicon Valley or shifting manufacturing operations to San Diego, your personal life keeps going.

They approached everything like a project. They did their research on timelines, ran the numbers on costs, and started looking for practical solutions. One CFO from Munich broke it down for me—he'd set aside $8,500 for legal fees after researching average attorney rates around Los Angeles.

He actually spent $139 total.

He used an online service instead of traditional lawyers. When you're already dropping $340,000 to relocate a team of 12 people across continents, unexpected legal expenses pile up fast.

What Trips People Up Most

Six executives told me the actual paperwork confused them more than their last funding round documents. And I've reviewed Series B paperwork before, so that's saying something.

California has specific forms you need to use. You can't just write a letter to a judge explaining what you agreed on. The state wants Form FL-100, then FL-120, plus roughly eight other forms depending on your situation. Miss one form and you're looking at delays nobody has time for.

But the biggest problem? Not understanding California's 6-month waiting period requirement. State law mandates this waiting time no matter how friendly everything is between both parties or how fast you complete your forms. I watched this VP of Operations from Amsterdam get visibly angry when she found out. She'd planned her whole transition schedule based on some 90-day estimate she'd seen on a random forum.

How Document Preparation Actually Works

I write about business and economics for a living—I'm not a lawyer. But I've looked through enough corporate filings to understand that getting your paperwork right really matters. One decimal point in the wrong spot on an SEC filing can trigger whole investigations. Same basic idea applies here.

Three different people mentioned they'd initially tried completing everything on their own using blank PDFs downloaded from the court website. Two gave up around the 4-hour mark. The third actually finished all his documents but got everything rejected at filing because he'd used the wrong version of a required form. Turns out California updated their official forms in January 2024, and he'd grabbed templates from 2023.

I reached out to a legal document preparer in San Jose to ask about this pattern. She confirmed she sees this constantly. People find outdated forms floating around online, spend hours filling out every field, drive to the courthouse feeling accomplished, and then discover they need to restart the entire process.

What Shifted How I Think About This Stuff

I used to believe all legal processes required hiring attorneys. Growing up in Rotterdam, that's just how everything worked.

But having these conversations changed how I view the whole system. Seven of them went through their cases without traditional legal representation at all. And they weren't taking shortcuts—they just had straightforward situations where both parties had already agreed on everything.

One founder from Berlin explained his thinking: "I wouldn't rewire my office building by myself obviously, but I can definitely follow clear instructions and fill out forms accurately when they're laid out properly." Keep in mind he'd sold his previous company for €23 million, so paying attention to details wasn't his weakness.

That's probably the real reason this approach worked well for them specifically. They were already used to reading complex documents regularly, following established procedures carefully, and triple-checking their work before submitting anything important.