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Partnership Agreement Worries!

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amagill

Junior Member
What is the name of your state?My business is in New York. I am currently starting a business [ boardtheglobe.com ] with a long time friend. I am a web developer by trade and ignorant about legal and tax matters of forming a company. My business partner has sent the proper forms to the state to form a single member partnership or LLC. He is listed as the only principal in the company. My resposiblity is pretty much site development, server administration. My partner does tax, legal and financial matters. We share responsibility in marketing and product development.

To get to the point though, we have a verbal agreement, that in exchange for my contribution I will recieve a share in the company. The percent / amount of the share has not been specified. Our combined investment in the company is barely over a hundred of dollars so far. It has occured to me that the only value that the company holds is the developed website which is completely my responsibility.

It might become that I am putting in the majority of the work and am simply at a disdvantage because there is no written agreement. I dont want it to happen that my future 'share' of the company is purely based upon my partners valuation of my contribution. So before I go crazy and dive in to this project, i understandably want something in writing.

My question is, what should i want to have in writing? What kind of agreement is this? Is there any legitimate reason why my partner would not want to write me into this agreement right now? Is this a reasonable and normal arrangement when starting a business? How can i retain the copyright for my work and what rights can that provide me?

In conclusion, because we have no real value, our investments are pretty much simply our time. My partner came up with the idea of the company, but it seems the whole thing centers around my work as a developer.

I've been burned before in a very similar situation before and any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
 



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