How can we Sue a Family Member?

[SassyGirl1488]

We live in WA and my husbands brother lives in Michigan. They decided to go into a small business venture of fixing medical supplies and selling them. Sounded like a good idea, my husband was responsible for the financial side and his brother was responsible for the repairs and sales - since this is what he does for a living. Well, long story short, his brother has only made I believe FOUR sales in TWO years and we have spent out of our pocket about 38K and we found out that he was spending the money on things other than the "business" now, we have tried to get the money from him, and he refuses to pay, always coming up with excuses. However he lives in a newer home, and just bought his wife a new Denali. I am pretty upset with this situation, since we spent half of the earnings we made this past year on this venture and cannot recoop anything. We set up a payment plan of $500 a month, which I thought was LOW but they made the first payment and now it is month two and no payment. Since we live in different states, can we sue him? I have been told that since he used the internet for sales, that jurisdiction can fall in any state and since we live in Washington we can sue him here. Also, would we have to file in civil since the balance owing is so large???

 

[Rexlan]

Do you have a written partnership agreement?
Do you have a partnership business license?
Have you ever filed a partnership tax return?

If you do not have any of the above then you will need to prove that you had an agreement, what the agreed responsibilities are and where the principal partnership business was located before you can do anything.

More than likely you will need to reduce your last agreement to writing and then you can enforce it.

 

[racer72]

You will have to sue in Michigan, a judgment from Washington is worthless outside of the state. Washington's long arm statutes would not apply, your BIL likely has no assets in Washington. You need to answer the questions in the post above before anything in this post is relevant.