December 29, 2011: Seattle Mariners’ Chris Larson and Wife Julia Calhoun

By Ron Garant

The divorce of Mariner’s co-owner Larson and his wife Julia continues to unfold with the latest ruling in the trial valuating Larson’s share of the Seattle Major League Baseball team at $641 million. King County Superior Court Judge William Downing based the ruling on testimony of two sports team valuation experts, and compared the Mariners favorably to the Texas Rangers, which sold for $593, and the Houston Astros, which sold for $610 million, during the past year.

With a 30.6 percent share, Larson remains the largest minority owner in the Mariners, exceeded only by majority owner Hiroshi Yamauchi, 84, who owns 55 percent of the team. Calhoun had originally sought a 50/50 split in assets for an approximate total of $300 million but the court ruled that a substantial part of Larson’s joint estate -- Mudville Nine Inc., the company he used to purchase his stake in the Mariners starting in 1992 -- was his alone and not subject to sharing with Calhoun. The asset has a value of $196 million with a discounted market value of $176 million if sold on its own as a minority share in the team.

The ruling gave his wife a much lesser award of $180 million -- $27 million to be paid in cash during the next two years. Larson had countered with an offer of $104 million with $25 million in cash, but the ruling will still cause challenges for his ownership stake in the Mariners because it requires that he absorb all of the couple’s outstanding debt, in excess of $150 million, as well as costs on his extravagant home estate in

Find local divorce information, click here : http://www.divorcemag.com/findprofessional.php

Listen to podcasts of previous TeleSeminars.