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Comment by mcsniff | Hacker News Reader

Disregard any advice you receive here that doesn't tell you to get a lawyer.

Get a lawyer.

No a lawyer is not needed.

There is no question that legitimately incurred business costs should be paid from available money, regardless of whether the cofounders are having a fight or not.

No legal question here….

The business is not bankrupt, so pay the bills.

Seems like the order should be employees/contractors, then bills, then owners.

The OP may or may not have executive authority to disperse funds.

Without the details of the business’s legal organization there is no way to know.

Hopefully there are legal documents establishing the company. But I would not bet $28000 on it.

And based on the circumstances described, I would advise having a legal opinion even for an apparent slam dunk because this one smells like it is heading to lawyers.

What can be said is:

if this person has been responsible for bill paying to this point and has historically had such responsibility

and if the business is not indebted beyond the money that they have remaining

then the invoices should be paid

a lawyer is not needed for the above situation - this is normal day to day business and such business should not be halted because the founders had an argument

No matter how you cut the cake, this person should not be in business until they've done some business education.

Whether or not they should be in business, they are in business and they are dealing with a minor mess.

Only a minor mess because:

1. There is money.

2. They aren’t being sued yet.

Getting lawyers involved before getting sued is the way to go, and it’s even better when there’s money to pay them.

No-one is being sued, so it is business as usual.

Pay your bills - that's how you run a business.

A founder breakup is not business as usual.

You have no idea whether the business is bankrupt. It’s very possible that the business is not generally paying their bills as they come due. You also have no idea whether the business will file for bankruptcy protection in the next few years, in which case transfers they make today might be fraudulent or preferential. You also don’t know whether any of these transfers were made to “insiders,” which could drastically change the timeline in the previous sentence.

I get it, your intuition is that businesses should generally pay their bills. I feel that way too. There are circumstances where that could be a really bad idea.

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