Timing of wedding a smart legal move

San Francisco: Getting married was a smart business move as well as a personal milestone for Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg, with the timing of the wedding, the day after the company's initial public offering (IPO), potentially proving particularly advantageous, California divorce lawyers said on Sunday. Assuming the couple signed a prenuptial agreement, as most wealthy Californians do, Zuckerberg and Chan would have agreed exactly how to split assets, including his Facebook stock, if their marriage dissolved in future. Even without a prenup, the wedding's timing would help establish the value of their assets in the event of any future divorce battle, lawyers said.

A spokeswoman for Facebook declined to comment on whether the couple signed such an agreement.

Priscilla Chan and Zuckerberg live together in the modest house in Palo Alto, California, where they were married on Saturday.

The couple met as undergraduates at Harvard University in 2004. Zuckerberg, now 28, dropped out of college to work on Facebook, while Chan, a paediatrician, stayed to earn her undergraduate degree in 2007.

Chan's work led to Facebook creating an organ donation page. The pair recently travelled to China.

Had they continued the status quo, Chan could potentially lay claim to a much larger portion of assets, including a chunk of his $20 billion in Facebook shares, lawyers say. "In California, people who live together without the benefit of marriage could claim they had an agreement to pool resources and efforts," said Napa, California, lawyer Robert Blevans.