The Executive Compensation Handbook

For the family lawyer handling a case involving executive compensation, there can be a dizzying array of arrangements, plans, bonuses, and agreements that can seem overwhelming. Providing an invaluable roadmap to a complicated aspect of financial issues occurring in divorce, this book offers a practical guide to understanding, negotiating, and dividing assets that fall into the broad category of executive compensation. These assets are notoriously complex, and this book provides alerts to common pitfalls while providing the background to allow the lawyer to explain the issues to both clients and judges.

Executive compensation can include stock options, restricted stock, restricted stock units, phantom stock, stock appreciation rights, long-term incentive plans, short-term incentive plans, cash bonuses, and supplemental executive retirement plans, among a myriad of other arrangements. This book looks at the executive compensation options where the benefit is in the category of nonqualified deferred compensation, providing guidance to enable family law practitioners to understand and navigate issues that arise with respect to deferred compensation.

Topics addressed in The Executive Compensation Handbook include:

• The most common types of executive compensation
• Where to find essential information
• What constitutes property
• Separate versus marital property
• Valuation
• Issues in dividing assets
• Using executive compensation for support purposes
• Tax considerations
• Practical drafting tips and techniques

This is an accessible reference manual for family lawyer on how to gather information, negotiate settlements, divide executive compensation plans, and draft separation agreements, as well as to use in drafting court financial statements where income needs to be disclosed and explained. In addition, family court judges can use this book for knowing the issues associated with dividing executive compensation and determining income when drafting orders in a dissolution of marriage or legal separation action, and the lawyer’s staff can use it to understand the types of questions to ask clients and opposing parties when gathering documentation or creating first drafts of disclosure documents and discovery requests.