What do you do when business partners disagree on distribution of the profits, whether someone isn’t carrying their own weight or when there is disagreement about how to run the company?  What should you do if one of your partners is commingling business money or assets with personal interests?  You need an experienced California partnership dispute attorney who can not only help to resolve the challenge(s) at hand but provide sound advice and counsel on all business aspects going forward.  You need the Watkins Firm.

The Watkins Firm takes a unique approach which is designed to resolve disputes between business partners in the most timely and cost-effective manner possible.  It might surprise you to learn that most disputes between members of an LLC or partnership are resolved through leveraged negotiation.  Your San Diego partnership dispute attorney from the Watkins Firm will work to get the attention of opposing parties, clarify your position and negotiate a resolution which accomplishes your goals and objectives.

If negotiations are unable to resolve all of the issues at hand mediation is a private, timely and cost-effective venue for resolving these types of disputes.  A neutral third party, the mediator, who is an expert on not only the law but these types of issues works between the parties to help them work through the dispute, identify potential options and ultimately settle the issue.

Pro-Tip: “What are some of the most common things we see that might lead to a dispute between members of an LLC or shareholders? There are a lot of things for partners to disagree about,  but one universal thing we found after almost 40 years of doing it is this: once the company starts making money, people will naturally rationalize their position to allow them to make a larger share of that money.  Once it starts making money it’s worth fighting over.

We handle this from both sides, from the drafting of the agreements to the actual disputes between partners and business owners. And one thing we’ve talked about is power and leverage. So if you don’t have a strong agreement and it’s just you and somebody else with a bland agreement, then the party with more power, more resources, the ability to fight can turn around and argue that the agreements you may have give them more rights and power. For example, if you are just a shareholder investor and you don’t have that much money and you don’t have a strong agreement, the person in charge can say, ‘well, I’m an officer now. And I award myself a million dollar a year salary, because I’m that great!’ And so what do you do? You didn’t cover that early and you need a good lawyer to cover that later because it’s going to be a fight.

If you suspect a business partner of theft, you need to talk to a good lawyer right away, like a Watkins Firm attorney, who’s done this for decades. For example, we had a case a long time ago, nine or 10 doctors were working together in our medical practice. And our two or three doctors were worried about something. They came to us and over that weekend, the managing members of the medical corporation took the entire practice, and moved. They changed the phone number, location, changed it all, the mailing address and took all the money and assets and bank accounts. Didn’t even tell the other partners, where they were going. Our guys showed up for work on Monday and there was no more work. Their practice had disappeared overnight down the street to a different facility with instructions to keep them out. So knowing something might be going on is the time to come to your lawyer so that we can do things to discover whether there’s really something going on and if there are remedies in the law that can stop that.

And there are things we can recommend to either gain additional evidence of that or to put a stop to what’s going on. We have experts that we use that can look at financial records better than a regular CPA. They’re called forensic CPAs. They can do a spot audit, and if we find something’s off five bucks, it’s the same as if it’s off 5 million. Numbers should match to the penny. If they don’t, it’s not hard to go find a reason why not, and usually it’s just a human error, you know, a accounting error. But if it’s not, sometimes we find it leads to real large theft, or worse.” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner

Your San Diego partnership dispute attorney should not only be skilled at resolving business disputes, but the personal relationships which often exist outside of the business.  Business partners are often family members or close friends.  Their lives are intertwined professionally, financially and personally.  A complete resolution must often address not only the business issues in dispute and the underlying corporate documents, but the personal relationships as well.  We invite you to review our podcast Episode 10 – The Importance of a Strong Corporate Attorney as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today.