In the ebb and flow between life and work, few challenges confront thriving businesses quite like owners who decide to end a marriage with a divorce.

        The divorce might come at a thriving time when the family-owned company must be intact to remain vibrant or it might arrive during a period of a flagging bottom line when all hands are needed.

        The workplace is often not an easy place to spend time, but it gets even more difficult when husband-and-wife principals, who are sometimes founders of a company, end one union while striving to keep another intact.

        That was what Linda Ray Rubel and Pete Koerbel, co-founders of Pete's PhotoWorld, faced four years ago when the two decided to end their marriage but keep their company in one piece.

        “I don't think most family businesses can survive divorce,” Ms. Rubel said. “Too often, you read stories about contentiousness spreading into the business. One partner starts a competing business.

        “I read about one where there was this camera store in New York and the owners got a divorce. The woman moved down the street and opened a competing store. It can get nasty, nasty, nasty.”

        Ms. Rubel wore the most hats at the time of the split in 1996. She was and remains president and chief executive and chief financial officer, and handles advertising and strategic planning for the company that employed 40 at the time of the divorce. Her husband handled sales and personnel, mostly, and worked out of all company stores on a rotating schedule.

        “We had an amicable divorce. With us, we recognized that while we were not particularly good in our marriage relationship, we were great business partners,” she said.

        Mr. Koerbel, the co-founder, said: “We decided that this business was something we both wanted, and the choice was there to dissolve or continue. We decided to continue with something that was successful.”

        There was a practical element to this business that could not be overlooked. When the two saw the revenue numbers, the only conclusion they could reach was that the company had to stay together if only to maintain profits.

        Both tried to keep a couple of key concerns on their day planners:

        • For each, the company was their lifeblood. “Both of us needed to eat,” she said.

        • A corporate split would have repercussions far beyond Ms. Rubel and Mr. Koerbel. Each of the employees would have to seek emotional solid ground at the workplaces. So would their spouses and siblings. In all, perhaps 70 lives, or more, would be touched. “It affected a lot of lives,” she said.

        • Trust was never more important for the two, particularly when it came to money. Without unrelenting trust that neither would raid the corporate bank accounts, the company would have likely gone under.

        Quentin Flemming of Santa Monica, Calif., author of Keep the Family Baggage Out of the Family Business ($14; Simon & Schuster), said divorces can have a terrific impact on business operations and that it happens more often than people realize.

        With about 90 percent of the businesses in the nation owned by families and a national divorce rate of 50 percent, how can it not, he wondered.

        “This happens to millions upon millions of family businesses,” he said. “It's leading up to the divorce that is the trying time. That's when things get thorny with problems and tensions. Sometimes, the business is like a child — other times, it's like an uninvited uncle.”

        He said it is important for principals to receive executive counseling and be aware that some employees will tend to be loyal to one or the other party.

        “The fact is that divorce has nothing to do with ending a marriage,” he said. “It has to do with retribution. When you have a business, all these assets are nice little weapons to use to punish the other spouse.”

        Few statistics are kept on the national or local impact of divorces on companies. Mr. Fleming said he searched for three weeks to come up with data but without any success.

        Some sobering statistics surround divorces and business dissolutions in the United States. According to U.S. Senate testimony on a measure to reform federal bankruptcy law in November 1999, soaring divorce rates have led to a staggering increase in bankruptcy filings by women.

        Divorced women are four times more likely to file for bankruptcy than married women or single men, while divorced or separated people are three times more likely than married couples to file for bankruptcy. In 1999, an estimated 540,000 women who headed their own household filed for divorce.

        Dr. Ellen Frankenberg, a psychologist and owner of Frankenberg Associates in Springdale, was hired to consult for Pete's PhotoWorld. She said this situation was able to play because of planning and because the company was lucky.

        “Most of these cases don't end this way. In fact, it's been my experience that it's rare. It takes an extraordinary effort,” she said.

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