Business Formation: Must the Partners Actually Work?

Opening up a new business is an exciting process, especially if you’ve got a partner on your team who is motivated to help you bring your amazing ideas to life. It’s easy to assume at this early stage that you and your partner will always have each other’s backs. After all, you trust your partner and your partner trusts you, right? And you’re both in this together.

But what happens as these expectations change over time? What if a disagreement arises regarding who’s doing the most, and working the hardest? Time, effort, and energy are the most fundamental building blocks to building–and maintaining–a small business. But, these things have repeatedly proven difficult, if not impossible, to measure, stack up, weigh, and compare. And believe it or not, individuals often have wildly different expectations as to what should become of a business, once it gets off the ground and starts becoming a success.

The bottom line is this: Without some agreement to the contrary, the partners of a business merely owe the business a minimum of effort, if that. So, in many circumstances your partner could just sit on his/her butt doing nothing, and still reap the same monetary rewards as you, as you put in loads of hard work and effort! Resentment, disagreements, and heated disputes are extremely likely to follow in this situation. And if the business is a success, expensive, draining, and time-consuming litigation is almost assuredly going to follow.

The most effective way to avoid these kinds of problems is to deal with them early. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. At Asheville Legal, our business lawyers encourage new business partners to create and execute clearly written documents, spelling out what the obligations and expectations are for everyone–and to do this at the outset. If you wait for a problem to develop, then your window to utilize this inexpensive prophylactic will be gone.

Of course, our seasoned litigators can also represent business owners who find themselves in this kind of mess, and need to find a way out. As experts in North Carolina’s civil court system, we have the aptitude, fortitude, and strategy to help you obtain positive results through the litigation system.