A path(ological) partition problem

Let τ(G) denote the number of vertices in a longest path of the graph G and let k₁ and k₂ be positive integers such that τ(G) = k₁ + k₂. The question at hand is whether the vertex set V(G) can be partitioned into two subsets V₁ and V₂ such that τ(G[V₁] ) ≤ k₁ and τ(G[V₂] ) ≤ k₂. We show that several classes of graphs have this partition property