Missouri football coach Gary Pinkel filed in Boone County Circuit Court for a divorce from his wife after nearly 40 years of marriage. Pinkel and his wife met at Kent State and married in 1973 just before his senior year of college. The Pinkels have three grown children but no minor children. The reason for the divorce has not been released. The couple separated in April 2012 but did not file for divorce until last week.

Divorces are always stressful, and when one member of the couple is involved in a high-profile job such as a college football coach, media attention can increase the stress of the process. Divorce attorneys who handle high-profile or high-asset divorce cases are well aware that there are unique challenges presented in a divorce of this type.

If a prenuptial agreement is in place, that can affect distribution of assets as well. In this particular case, because Pinkel married while in college nearly 40 years ago, it would seem unlikely that the pair would have considered the possibility that he would become a highly paid major college football coach in the decades to come.

In any divorce case, a divorce attorney assists the partners in deciding how to settle questions of disposition of property, including homes, businesses, income, insurance, retirement accounts, and intangible assets such as business goodwill or copyrights. In a high-profile or high-asset divorce case, these questions may be more complex, but they also offer unique opportunities for lawyers to use creative legal strategies to assist divorcing couples in coming to terms with their new life situations and making fair dispositions of their assets.

Source: Columbia Daily Tribune, “Pinkel’s divorce filed in county court,” Oct. 4, 2012