About Growing Partners

Growing Partners covers one subject: business partnerships between the owners of small and mid-sized businesses. That means forming one and choosing the structure, writing the partnership or operating agreement, splitting equity and profit, handling a dispute between partners, and getting out, whether by a buyout, a buy-sell agreement after a death or disability, or dissolving the business. Joint ventures and channel or referral partnerships are part of it too.

Most partnership trouble is decided long before it arrives, in the clauses two people did not write when they still agreed on everything. So the pages here are built to be used before signing as much as after a falling out. Each one answers its question first, then gives the rule behind it with the source linked: the state statute, the uniform act most states adopted, the IRS form, the court opinion.

Where the law differs by state, the tables say so state by state, with the statute cited on each row. Where there is arithmetic (an equity split, a buyout price, a payment plan, a capital account), the numbers are worked through line by line, and the site's calculators do the same with your own figures. Where a reader needs wording, there is sample clause language to take to a lawyer.

Nothing here is legal or tax advice for a particular business. It is general information, carefully sourced, written so that the conversation with a lawyer or accountant is shorter and better informed. Corrections are welcome through the contact page. How this site researches and sources what it publishes, including how often the state tables are rechecked, is on the editorial policy page.