Thanks to The Indiana Law Blog for pointing out Same-Sex And Worried About Retirement from the Washington Post.

For those interested in wineries and the interstate shipping issues may want to look at the proposed Illinois law. Here is a description from The Chicago Tribune:

Or the limited liability company's operating agreement? Or a partnership agreement?

First and foremost, these documents set out how the legal entity will operate internally. Think of them as a blueprint or like a disk operating system. I used the analogy to tailor made goods in an earlier post. The by-laws set out the rights and responsibilities of the owners to one another and to the business. The by-laws need to meet the needs of the owners and the business.

Secondly, the agreement - if it is any good - sets out the process for splitting up the business. For a bit more on this topic you might want to read Like a marriage, a new business partnership needs a 'pre-nup' written by an Illinois attorney and published in The Napierville Sun.

From today's Muncie Star-Press:

BREAK-IN: A Muncie man was arrested Saturday afternoon, accused of dealing several thousand dollars worth of property from acquaintances.

The suspect, Stephen E. Nipper Jr., 27, 2611 S. Tacoma Drive, was preliminarily charged with burglary, a class B felony, after police found him trying to sell property stolen from a home at 307 E. Harvard Ave.

The victims said Nipper had dropped his son off at their residence and apparently came back and took property that included a shotgun, gold and diamond jewelry and cameras, police officer Melissa Pease reported.

Nipper claimed the victims owed him money for work. He remains in jail without bond.

Folks, small claims does not cost that much and if you are owed more than $3,000.00 then a lawyer is still cheaper than sitting in jail. Think about it.

You want to start a business. You read everything you can about starting a business. You probably have read enough about needing a business plan. Well, you do need a business plan. Whether you have a business plan is one of my first questions for clients wanting to start a business. So, now I offer more reading on business plans: this is a search page for business plans under Blawger. Which means you may get some irrelevant posts from law related blogs on business plans but Blawger gives a pretty good preview so separating wheat from chaff is not too hard.

I ran across this blog last week and think it is worth taking a look. Its origins are not clear to me but it is a group blog and labor law seems a bit of a misnomer. Most often labor law tends to mean only the law governing unions and an union relations with employers. This blog goes beyond that narrow definition to include employment law issues such as overtime pay and EEOC discrimination matters. On top of all that, the writers write clearly about the subjects. So take a look at The Labor Law Center Blog.

I usually discuss prenuptial agreements on my Indiana Divorce and Family Law Blog. I use Google news alerts to keep track of news on prenuptial agreements and that is why I am writing about them on this blog. The latest alert came laden with references to stories from the business page. This might be a trend as an earlier post here mentioned. Certainly, it is good for the business writers to acknowledge the importance (and impact) of family law on businesses.

The New Hampshire Business Resource has a fairly good article Protecting your business assets with a ‘prenup’. I do take issue with part of the following paragraph, though:

Stock in a family business owned by one spouse is marital property, and absent a valid prenuptial agreement would technically be subject to division under New Hampshire’s statutes. As a practical matter, however, it is unlikely that a court would order one spouse to transfer shares in a closely held business to the other spouse upon divorce, since judges and marital masters are mindful that post-divorce joint ownership of a business venture is unlikely to succeed. Accordingly, the court is likely to award all shares of stock in a closely owned family business to the spouse related to that family.

After nineteen years, I think that anyone can say what any judge will do about any matter in any particular case. Judges in divorce cases think that if both parties are equally angry then they have done a good job. What makes a prenuptial so useful is removing the surprise inherent in any judge's decision of what makes an equitable division of property.