The breakup of long-time business partners can be one of the most complicated and emotionally charged situations for a financial adviser to handle. It’s even more difficult when the partners are also family members.

That was the challenge facing adviser Rob O’Dell of Wheaton Wealth Partners in 2010, when a client asked for help negotiating the sale of his shares in the family business. Mr. O’Dell’s client was in his early 60s, and together with his younger brother had owned a retail business worth roughly $5 million, plus real-estate assets, for several years. The younger brother now wanted to take complete ownership so he could pass the business on to his children.

The negotiation had descended into a dispute over which brother had been more responsible for the success of the business and how to fairly split business assets. That conflict was causing a rift within the extended family.

“It was an ugly business divorce with a lot of moving parts,” says Mr. O’Dell, whose firm manages $135 million for 71 clients through offices in Wheaton, Ill., and Naples, Fla. “There were other siblings involved who didn’t have ownership in the business, there was real estate, there were family dynamics and some complicated business finances.”

Those complexities led Mr. O’Dell to a solution that changed his entire approach to financial advising. What was needed, Mr. O’Dell realized, was a way for each brother to see the situation from the other’s perspective. And Mr. O’Dell had a method to literally make that happen: Mind mapping.

Mind mapping is a technique for diagramming complex information. A mind map starts with a central idea, from which related ideas or sets of information are linked in separate branches. Mr. O’Dell had been using mind-mapping software to help manage his firm, but the “business divorce” seemed like a perfect opportunity to try using it with clients.

“We told my client it was experiment and he was OK with that,” says Mr. O’Dell. “So we started mapping out his situation.”

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Tags: business assets, financial adviser, retail business worth, Wheaton Wealth Partners