But it's when we think of divorce as a corporate risk that it takes on another whole dimension and provides cautionary tales to give CEOs nightmares. It may be bad enough that the dirty laundry of CEOs is aired in public, but the whole process can cause a chain of complex reactions: damage to company brand; shareholders asking questions, which can ultimately benefit the public but not necessarily the company; and the tricky financial fall-out of some truly convoluted deals.

Not to mention how the hits a company takes may affect the average employee. Take Elon Musk's divorce from his wife Justine, for example. Musk ploughed most of his own money into Tesla, off the back of his sales of Zip2 and PayPal to Compaq and eBay respectively. Tesla has been his 'baby' in a certain sense -- his electric car venture has consumed him. He netted $48-million in income investments between 2005 and 2008, which were sunk back into Tesla and SpaceX, a space exploration concern. But court filings brought his cash-flow problems to light, revealing he was living off personal loans from friends since October 2009.

Tesla also had cash-flow problems and had borrowed from the United States government (a cool $465-million in low-interest loans) through a Department of Energy loan programme.

At the time, Tesla was looking to go the IPO route -- but the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pored over Musk's personal financial affairs, asking whether Tesla was forthright enough in its filings regarding how his impending divorce would affect the company's bottom line. Tesla was relying heavily on Musk's continued financial interest in his entrepreneurial venture, reimbursing him for his private jet flights in return, as well as awarding him 6,7-million stock options in December 2009.

The situation looked liked this. Musk's shares in his company, Tesla Motors Inc, were held in private trust -- but his wife sought half his stock in Tesla and 5% in his stake in SpaceX as part of a divorce settlement. If Musk's shares had been declared marital property, he would not have been able to sell his holdings without permission from his ex-wife. If he lost a large shareholding, Tesla would be in default of the Department of Energy loan and the company's IPO could have been in jeopardy. (As it happens, the IPO went ahead -- Tesla raised more than $226-million.)

Justine, a fantasy novelist, went into some detail about the divorce on her blog (http://moschus.livejournal.com), stating: "For those who want to know the extent of my golddigging, this is what I asked for, from my ex-husband and the father of my five children Elon Musk, who is a billionaire -- albeit with cash/liquidity issues, which I would work with him to work around -- and utterly brilliant.

    * The house

    * Alimony and child support

    * 6-million cash

    * 10% of his stock in Tesla

    * 5% of his stock in SpaceX (and he retains all voting rights)

    * A Tesla Roadster (I really, really want one...)"