Business partnerships are incredibly useful and advantageous as they enable the partners to grow their business through shared and increased levels of knowledge, expertise, and resources. Conflict can arise between partners for a multitude of reasons, most likely though due to disagreements relating to the use of resources or disagreements about fundamental business decisions. These conflicts can extend from small business partnership disputes to large scale business partnerships. When conflict arises between partners it may not only result in increased costs and levels of time inefficiency, but may also lead to a complete breaking down of the relationship.
Partnership dispute resolution
How do you resolve a partnership dispute? A key way in resolving partnership disputes, is to engage in dispute resolution processes. These may be contained within a partnership agreement between the parties or alternatively the disputing parties can choose freely to engage in such processes. Notably these process include: negotiation; mediation; and arbitration. Negotiation and mediation require that both parties enter into these processes in good faith and with a willingness to resolve the dispute, as ultimately the resolution of the conflict is in their hands. Arbitration involves a third party (either agreed to by the parties themselves or appointed by the courts) making a legally binding decision on the parties. RCR’s Business partnership dispute lawyers can be vital resources when trying to resolve partnership dispute as through our experience handling many clients in the industry we have a practical understanding of conflicts which generally arise and the ways in which those conflicts (if possible) are resolved. Furthermore, we have represented our clients in all forms of dispute resolution processes are adept at ensuring that your interests are properly represented.
What do you do if it does not appear that the partnership dispute can be resolved?
Depending on the dispute and the parties ability to resolve this conflict, it very well may be a situation that the conflict remains unresolved and the business partnership breakdowns as a result. It may also be the case that even if the conflict is resolved the dispute that arose was enough to result in an unfixable breakdown of the business partnership. In both of these situations the ultimate outcome may be the ceasing of the business relationship. If this is the case, many question arise such as:
- How do you dissolve a business partnership?
- How do you remove a partner from a partnership?
- Can one partner dissolve a partnership? (Yes)
The Australian Government’s business site provides for several different ways to dissolve a business partnership:
- The partnership term as stated in the formal partnership agreement expires
- One partner gives written notice to the other partners to exit the partnership
- One or more partners can no longer legally own a business
- A court issues a court order to dissolve the business
- A partner becomes bankrupt
- One of the partners dies
- The business is bankrupt or insolvent
RCR Lawyers can provide the following services regarding business partnerships:
- Assisting in the preparation of documents for the establishment of a business partnership;
- Advising you on your interests under your partnership agreement and/or under law;
- Assisting you with the dissolving of your business partnership;
- Ensuring that you receive your entitlements if any following the dissolving of the partnership;
- Engaging in any action necessary that may arise as a result of the conflict.
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you encounter any problems in regards to the above and more broadly any issue regarding business partnerships and any subsequent conflicts you may experience.
