Things you need to know if you break-up with your co-founder who is also your life partner

SA Law's corporate & commercial partner Vinccent Billings explains what you need to know if your relationship ends and you happen to be business partners too.
Mon 24th Jun 2019

A well drafted and up-to-date shareholders agreement or partnership agreement can put some boundaries in place to help avoid costly and time consuming – and in some cases vindictive – legal proceedings should you and your partner break up and they exit the business.

Prevention is always better than the cure, so the simplest advice in relation to any business is always to ensure that any confidential information such as access to bank accounts, online accounts are available to be accessed by more than one person. This is the same advice you would give business owners if a director passed away, the business would still need to continue and the information to access bank accounts, online accounts etc would need to be available.

The same position applies in relation to family businesses – important information required to run a business must always be available to all the directors. There have been many issues over the years where applications are made to court by shareholders of a company or a beneficiary under a will. The unfortunate situation here is where the company only had one director and when that person has passed away, the business cannot continue without the court appointing another director. Once the new director is appointed they then have the task of having to find the relevant business information to run the business with varying degrees of success.

Read Vincent’s full article published by Elite Business.