Hello all,

I have a 50/50 business partner who is a little wild at times. Every now and again he shuts himself off and leaves me to handle the day to day. I am more invested in the operational side of the business anyway, so I didn’t mind much at first. But it became more of a problem and I had a chat with him about not disappearing and being MIA for days on end. He was very apologetic said he’d been occupied with family, wife, kids, etc. I repeated to him he should always prioritize family but he can’t just drop his other responsibilities. He seemed visibly annoyed but said the right things.

This kept happening and I eventually had a more serious chat about “his negligence to the business and that he can’t expect to be a team player if he doesn’t act like it. Everyone has life issues that happen and need our attention but we are grown adults and need to ensure our other responsibilities I.e. the business, aren’t left unattended… not being reachable for days on end is not something we are ok with and we need a better process for this moving forward” I didn’t think I’d have to be talking to a 40 yr old about this!

He was very mad at being confronted… I told him to take a day to think it over and let’s reconvene.

To my surprise, the next morning he went to the bank and closed our business checking accounts and wired me half of the balance. And proceeded with dissolution procedures to shut down the LLC and EIN #… and emailed me saying he is no longer in the company and I can keep the rest of the assets… (mainly digital assets)

WTF!!!!!!!!

I knew I had made mistakes with this entering partnership and decided to make the best of it for our investment but his actions took me by surprise.

I emailed our clients and explained that my partner has left the business and I have acquired his shares. Opened a new sole proprietor LLC and basically tried to keep as much of this fiasco from our business dealings.

What would you do with someone like this? He took 50% of the bank balances but this isn’t a liquidation, we have ongoing work to pay for?! Can I sue him for endangering our business and my investment in it?