Tricky 'Partnership' Situation

[dashbox]

What is the name of your state? FLORIDA

This may be long, but please bare with me.

I started a website in October of last year on my own accord, and worked on it for about a month before I got to know someone on the sites messageboard and we began to chat on AIM. Whilst getting to know each other I decided he may be beneficial to my websites 'business'. so we agreed via AIM chat that he would be a 'aprtner' in the 'business'. All the while up until now even we never put anything in writing, nor did we get a business license to do commerce or anything.

Now this guys main role was to get banner ad sponsors for the site. He did a very good job of this for the last 3 and a half months. He would speak with companies, get them to advertise, and then they would send $$ to MY paypal account for payment. We in turn used this money to pay for server costs, etc. To this day we still never made a dime of profit.

Recently some things about his past started surfacing that I felt very uncomfortable about. Basically he owed a LOT of money to companies within the same industry we were looking for sponsors in. Some of those companies were even current banner ad sponsors of our site. So anyhow even more recently some of those companies figured out who he was and dropped their support for our site, and spread the word to other companies about who they would be dealing with... so unfortunately we had a lot fo companies against supporting us, which in the long run would force us to shut the site down because we wouldn't have any revenue to support the costs involved to run the site.

So today I confronted him about it, and 'fired' him. I simply told him his past reputation was too heavily affecting our sponsorships which are the life blood of our site, and that was unacceptable. He has owed this money for 2 years now, so there was no chance of him building rapport again with these companies. Bottom line being that if he was part of our site we would lose most of the support we needed.

I personally feel that since I started the website I have every right to end our partnership and work on building the site sponsorship back up. He however feels that I am in the wrong and I was legally bound to have him as a partner. He is threatening legal action - but he lives in Canada.

So under the circumstances am I obligated to keep him as a 'partner' if we merely agreed via an AIM conversation? What can he do in this situation? He claims that since he made all of the money for the site (which all went back into the site) that he can prove some sort of 'ownership'.

I will surely have more questions once I get some feedback, but this is getting drawn out right now. Please let me know if there are any details I need to mention to help strengthen my response.

Thank you all for your time. It means a lot to me to figure this out ASAP, and I appreciate any information anyone can give.

 

[HomeGuru]

What is the name of your state? FLORIDA

This may be long, but please bare with me.

I started a website in October of last year on my own accord, and worked on it for about a month before I got to know someone on the sites messageboard and we began to chat on AIM. Whilst getting to know each other I decided he may be beneficial to my websites 'business'. so we agreed via AIM chat that he would be a 'aprtner' in the 'business'. All the while up until now even we never put anything in writing, nor did we get a business license to do commerce or anything.

Now this guys main role was to get banner ad sponsors for the site. He did a very good job of this for the last 3 and a half months. He would speak with companies, get them to advertise, and then they would send $$ to MY paypal account for payment. We in turn used this money to pay for server costs, etc. To this day we still never made a dime of profit.

Recently some things about his past started surfacing that I felt very uncomfortable about. Basically he owed a LOT of money to companies within the same industry we were looking for sponsors in. Some of those companies were even current banner ad sponsors of our site. So anyhow even more recently some of those companies figured out who he was and dropped their support for our site, and spread the word to other companies about who they would be dealing with... so unfortunately we had a lot fo companies against supporting us, which in the long run would force us to shut the site down because we wouldn't have any revenue to support the costs involved to run the site.

So today I confronted him about it, and 'fired' him. I simply told him his past reputation was too heavily affecting our sponsorships which are the life blood of our site, and that was unacceptable. He has owed this money for 2 years now, so there was no chance of him building rapport again with these companies. Bottom line being that if he was part of our site we would lose most of the support we needed.

I personally feel that since I started the website I have every right to end our partnership and work on building the site sponsorship back up. He however feels that I am in the wrong and I was legally bound to have him as a partner. He is threatening legal action - but he lives in Canada.

So under the circumstances am I obligated to keep him as a 'partner' if we merely agreed via an AIM conversation? What can he do in this situation? He claims that since he made all of the money for the site (which all went back into the site) that he can prove some sort of 'ownership'.

I will surely have more questions once I get some feedback, but this is getting drawn out right now. Please let me know if there are any details I need to mention to help strengthen my response.

Thank you all for your time. It means a lot to me to figure this out ASAP, and I appreciate any information anyone can give.

**A: Go figure.

 

[successbiz]

My understanding is that if there is no documentation to prove a partnership, there is no real partnership. Verbal agreements hold a burden of proof. If your alleged partner can prove it through any sort of documentation, he might have a case. I know this because I have already had to seek counsel on this same issue. I too am running an internet company and have an alleged partner. There was nothing written between us that there was a partnership, but if someone can prove it...well let's just say we are going to have a situation. There are a few locations where my alleged partners name appears and that has to be removed, but aside from that I seem to be in the clear, legally. I am not a lawyer, nor claim to be one! Just a person that can definately relate to your situation.