I think we addressed this in your previous post, but in case it was lost, my sense was that this is a very unfortunate but extremely common non-competition clause situation.

Business partners, in all types of businesses, often have to sign agreements that if they leave the business and go into the same business on their own or at a new office, will not take any clients with them, often for a period up years (I've seen three year non-competes), so I think that's exactly what happened here, unfortunately.

It's lousy that this kind of thing happens when the services are so personal, but I've heard of it many times before.