The questions you need to ask when starting an Oklahoma business with another person

There is nothing like the excitement of starting a new business.  Even more so when you have a partner, someone to share the experience with. 

Things are probably never as good as when you are infused with the pure adrenaline of seeing your dreams become reality. 

–BUT–

things happen, businesses fail, and even worse sometimes businesses succeed.  When these events happen often the business is closing, an owner wants to leave, or an owner dies.  The time to sort out these situations and to plan for these situations is while things are good and calm, which means at the businesses’ inception.

Consider these questions when you are starting a business with another person:

  • Are you, as an owner, protected from having the liability of the business seep into your personal assets?
  • What if the business gets sued?
  • What if someone quits or is fired?
  • Do you have the proper type and amount of insurance?
  • How do you buy out the person who has left?
  • How much do you pay the heirs of an owner who has died?
  • How do you determine the value of their interest in the entity?

I help people answer these questions and put processes in place to make these circumstances happen as smoothly as possible.  If you would like to talk about these things, please feel free to reach out to me.

Posted by Shawn Roberts

On this blog, I write about and try to answer practical Oklahoma legal questions. My focus and most experience is in estate planning and business issues including Oklahoma non-compete law. I make a living as an attorney in the law firm I founded, Shawn J. Roberts, P.C. in Oklahoma City. I live in Edmond with my wife Amy and my two children, Sam (19) and David (11). We live precisely in the path of where the "wind comes sweeping down the plains."