Hanson v. Hanson’s Empirical Analysis
1987
Citation profile
2 federal appellate · 60 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 62 later decisions — most recently March 2025 · most notably Eslami v. Eslami (1991), Cleverly v. Cleverly (1989)
2 federal appellate · 60 state decisions — followed in 14 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on 103 Wis. 2d 327 - Holbrook v. Holbrook · Dardick v. Dardick · Dugan v. Dugan · In Re the Accounting of Brown · 103 Wash. 2d 236 - In Re the Marriage of Hall
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 62 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
““Because of the difficulties inherent in separating the reputation of the professional from that of his enterprise, evidence that other professionals are willing to pay for goodwill when acquiring a practice is, in our view, the only acceptable evidence of the existence of goodwill. Thus, as a matter of proof, the existence of goodwill is shown only when there is evidence of a recent actual sale of a similarly situated professional practice, an offer to purchase such a practice, or expert testimony and testimony of members of the subject profession as to the existence of goodwill in a similar practice in the relevant geographic and professional market. Absent such evidence, one can only speculate as to the existence of goodwill. Divisions of marital property may not be based on speculation as to the very existence of the property being divided.” Id. at 435 [6] (footnote omitted).”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“value of the practice which exceeds its tangible assets and which is the tendency of clients/patients to return to and recommend the practice irrespective of the reputation of the individual practitioner.”
3 later decisions quote this exact passage“disturbing inequity in compelling a professional practitioner to pay a spouse a share of intangible assets at a judicially determined value that could not be realized by a sale or another method of liquidating value.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.