Partnership Agreement

[salsa1]

I am in a partnership for 2 yrs. 3 motnhs after I joined one partner left . and another joined. the work on agreement was inprogress and document ready to be signed in 2007 that 2 more partners decided to leave. Again further work was carried out to make amendements to the original document sent to me at timeof appointment. Now the latest document was ready to be signed and in the minutes of the meetings it says ,"the final draft is now ready for signing any minor amendments can be done in future". A dispute has arisen and 2 of the partners hold the view that we are a partnership at wil and wish to dissolve the partnership under partnership act.
I wonder if that is true as for the last 2 yrs we all have worked according to the original agreement which was not signed, and the latest document that was ready for signing again has not been signed by anybody yet.
Please advise asap.

[Anna Chandley]

In the absence of a written partnership agreement the rules of the Partnership Act will apply automatically. As none of the partnership agreements drafted were signed I would assume that this would not be valid and would not therefore over rule the Act. I think you would need to look at the provisions of the Act to see what it says about dissolving the partnership.

Please note that I am not a lawyer.

[Lime One]

Anna is right, unless there is clear evidence that the contents of the various draft agreements were accepted both in practice and via a trail of paper the Partnership Act determines the outcome.

However, if and I sincerely hope this will not happen, was to proceed to a court dispute the court would look at all docs rather than just dicounting those elements of agreement.

Much better to resolve this by discussion and agreeing a way forward and then getting it documented rather than go down the costly and painful route of protracted dispute.

Happy to talk through the legal options with you including various methods of resolution of the dispute.