Tennessee divorce case Skidmore C. Garrett v. Jona M. Garrett. Robert Vance was the testifying expert with the value that was “most accurate” on a financial advisory business.

January 27, 2026

In the Court of Appeals of TN at Knoxville

Appeal from the Chancery Court for McMinn County

Judge J. Michael Sharp

No. 2019-CV-310

Filed June 30, 2025

Husband provided financial services through a business called CLG Wealth Management, LLC, of which he was the sole owner. Initially, Husband and Wife retained an agreed-upon expert (we call it a "mutual” expert) to evaluate CLG. Months later, Wife learned that Husband had retained a different expert to perform an independent business valuation. Husband’s expert and the mutual expert “used different methods to evaluate the parties’ business, and the values therein differ[ed] radically.” Wife then hired her own independent expert (Forensic & Valuation Services, PLC - Vance) to value the business.

Husband was the only one at CLG who “provide[d] investment management, retirement, estate, and financial planning.” Although the business partnered with Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. to use its platform to purchase securities and make transactions, Husband was an independent contractor and not an employee of Raymond James. Husband’s clients belonged to him.

Husband explained that he received compensation for his services to these clients in three basic forms: 1) a small percentage originated from “direct commissions” from product sales; 2) 15% from “servicing trails” which were ongoing commissions resulting from products Husband had sold and continued to manage; and 3) a majority of compensation derived from quarterly “advisory fees.” Advisory fees differed from trail income in that they were paid directly by clients for Husband’s management of their assets rather than by the brokerage house or the insurance company that the product was placed with. In our experience, the latter is how most financial advisors are paid these days.

Husband’s expert witness testified that he valued the business at $57,000. In his view, CLG was “a personal goodwill business” and had “zero enterprise goodwill.” Husband explained that, hypothetically, someone could buy his servicing trails, but the buyer would not be guaranteed to keep the trail income unless the buyer could “get the client to transfer [to them] and then . . . get the client to stay.”

Vance opined that the court should consider enterprise goodwill in the valuation because Husband could sell access to his client list and, therefore, the opportunity to manage those clients’ assets, even if the clients would not be required to remain with the buyer. In my opinion, that really is the key – as a general rule, if you can sell it, the business has marital value in a Tennessee divorce. Husband could sell “the access to the revenue stream . . . the client access.” I testified that any sale would include enterprise goodwill and the “income approach” appropriately captured this enterprise goodwill. I testified that if personal goodwill had been included, the value would have reached $532,000.

Husband pointed to cases in which this Court has “been reluctant to allow enterprise goodwill to be divided as a marital asset upon divorce when the business involved is a sole proprietorship” as support for his argument that the trial court should have used the net asset value method. See Lunn v. Lunn, No. E2014-00865-COA-R3-CV, 2015 WL 4187344, at *6 (Tenn. Ct. App. June 29, 2015); Hartline v. Hartline, No. E2012-02593-COA-R3-CV, 2014 WL 103801, at *13 (Tenn. Ct. App. Jan. 13, 2014). But the choice of the proper valuation method depends on the unique facts of each case. Wallace, 733 S.W.2d at 107. The appellate court recognized that, “[w]hen the methodology or factual basis for an expert’s opinion is patently flawed, the courts can and should discount the opinion.” Owens v. Owens, 241 S.W.3d 478, 488 (Tenn. Ct. App. 2007). “But the opinion of Wife’s expert [Vance] does not fall within that category.”

Interestingly, I was the expert in the 2015 Lunn case. Dr. Lunn was a sole proprietorship dentist in Chattanooga and the trial court found that Lunn’s practice had enterprise goodwill value, but the appellate court overturned that ruling with the logic that a sole proprietor can have no goodwill at all, personal or enterprise, stating “whether his business could continue without him is speculative”. I interpret to mean a sole proprietor could not sell his practice which I know to be untrue based upon personal and professional experience. Along those lines, Lunn sold his dental practice in 2023 to a large dental support organization as was reported in many Chattanooga news outlets.