No food fued as Puck and wife plan partnership despite divorce. (Up Front).

Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck could be concocting his most challenging dish yet.

Puck's pending divorce from Barbara Lazaroff, his wife and business partner of 20 years, leaves the future of the Wolfgang Puck food empire in question.

The pair plans to remain business partners after the divorce is finalized, but attorneys who have worked with married business partners said the emotions that dictate the terms of a divorce can have a critical impact on a business.

This could be especially true in the case of Puck and Lazaroff, who together built the Wolfgang Puck brand into a worldwide operation that projects $300 million in revenues this year, and upon whom the success of the business depends.

"It just depends on how strongly they feel about keeping the enterprise together," said H. Tony Oppenheimer, president of Oppenheimer Management and Consulting. Associates in Los Angeles. "Anytime there's a divorce, there's pain. How they deal with that, and how strongly they feel about the future, has a lot to do with whether the business works."

Lazaroff filed for divorce in Los Angeles Superior Court on Nov. 27. Her attorney, Harold Stanton of Stanton Law Group in Encino, declined comment.

A spokeswoman for both Lazaroff and Puck, Jannis Swerman, said the divorce is "amicable" and that their business relationship will not change.

"It's every intention our business will continue as it has been, and ownership will continue as it has been," Swerman said.

Lazaroff and Puck, who were partners in the opening of the first Spago restaurant in West Hollywood in 1982, have a lot of reasons to keep their business relationship together.

In addition to fine dining chains including Spago and Chinois, the business includes Wolfgang Puck Catering and Events, the Wolfgang Puck Cafe chain, the Wolfgang Puck Express franchise, Cucina! Cucina!, and Wolfgang Puck Worldwide Inc., which oversees licensing and branding.

Puck's involvement is essential for the business to survive, said Cary Goldstein, a Beverly Hills family law attorney. If Wolfgang Puck, known for his TV and restaurant appearances, pulled out of his marketing obligations, he could become simply a face on a can, like "Chef Boyardee," which would negatively affect the brand, he said.

Likewise, the business relies on Lazaroff, responsible for the design and decor of the restaurants.

"They need each other," Goldstein said. "They're both intelligent people, and they both recognize it would be foolish to destroy what they've created."

Outlook unclear

In general, the odds are stacked against divorced couples that try to share managerial responsibilities for a business. While not all are doomed to failure, a divorce is more likely than not to create business disputes, Oppenheimer said.

Whenever a family-run business suffers a "dynamic" occurrence, such as divorce or a death, it is only 15 percent likely to survive by its third generation, he said. A divorce only adds negative feelings to the mix, he said.

Ira Friedman, a divorce partner at Friedman & Friedman, said he once represented a couple that ran a garment manufacturing business When they divorced, they agreed to hand over the operation of the business to a third party Ultimately, the business failed because it needed the skills set of both parties to survive.

What's more, the legal relationship between partners changes once they're no longer married, said Friedman, who has been running his law firm with his wife for 12 years.

"When you're married, you have a fiduciary duty to your spouse that crosses over to the business," he said. "A fiduciary duty means you owe a duty... not to take advantage of the other party. There's no longer a fiduciary duty when you separate."

Agreements reached as part of a divorce, such as property settlements, could significantly alter how the business is run, attorneys said.

The Puck operation are privately held, and the ownership structure is unclear. The various Puck businesses an held by two corporations, a limited liability company and two limited partnerships, according to the California Secretary of State.

Ultimate control o partnerships depends on who the general partner is, Goldstein said, as well as if the couple's interest is held jointly by another entity, which can still exist if they are divorced.

In a corporate structure, ownership would likely remain unchanged, or be split 50/50 under California's community property divorce regulations, he said. But if there arc outside investors -- as is the case for several Wolfgang Puck restaurants -- the majority ownership could change if the investors take sides.

"If he's got outside investors who could join with one of them and have numeric control of the corporation, that would be an interesting factor and could complicate things' said Don Mike Anthony, a divorce attorney at Pasadena-based Hahn & Hahn LLP.

In addition to ownership, the two will have to agree upon who has responsibility for what -- a decision that would best be facilitated by a neutral party of some type, Anthony said.

Even Swerman, the spokeswoman, conceded that ownership of the individual restaurants after the divorce is uncertain.

"Anything is possible," she said. "Can we foresee who gets custody of the restaurants? No."

One advantage in this split-up is the size of the business and its several entities. "At least there's more room for negotiation," Oppenheimer said.

Keeping things amicable is also necessary to alleviate the risk of lawsuits, which could make private information public record, Friedman said. An initial divorce proceeding typically includes few details, he said. But if one of the parties is unhappy with the agreements in place, and can't negotiate their differences, they could file a second claim in court that includes details such as profit margins or wage agreements, he said.

"Do you think Puck or his wife Barbara really want people to know how much money Spago is taking in?" Friedman said.