Hi.
I started a business with a close family member 12 years ago. At the time we had nothing and both worked round the clock for little and eventually got things off the ground. Two years later another immedeiate family member joined us and we made a 3 way partnership
I left the business 3 year ago. I won't go on and make this post very long, but needless to say working in the business with partner number 1 (managing partner) was making me ill. He was very unfair and I felt taken advantage of. He was paying himself double, and giving silly reasons (like I was a Mum) and generally making me stressed out and felt bullied.
At the time I left there was my two partners and another family member had joined as a salaried employee. So I no longer work there, but still own a portion of the business and my family still run it.
However, I have never seen a penny from it.
The business makes a great profit (sales in the millions, increases every year) btu what they do is instead of showing a "profit", they just pay themselves more. So if the company makes a £100,000 profit they just all get a new car, a free holiday and a salary bump to share it between the three of them.
then I get told there's no "profit" to share.
I have let this go for a very long time, but I'm a single parent of a SN child and frequently my "family" members will offer to help me out, lend me money or pay a bill for me - but I can't help feeling like this makes me a charity case while each one of them has their rent, bills, holidays, cars paid for an an exhorbitant salary when what they should really be doing (if they genuinely wanted to help me) is pay themselves a normal market - rate salary, without all the extras and then fairly sharing profits out between the shareholders of the business.
To put this in perspective, the family member who joined last is an admin person and gets paid £70,000.
As you can see...this is a joke.
I feel miffed to say the least as I built the company from nothing, feel like I was bullied out (for exactly this reason as I felt business practices were dodgy and he didn't like being questioned and wanted me gone so he could do stuff like this) and like as a shareholder I should get something.
I think the way they all see it is that I left so it's nothing to do with me anymore.
WWYD?
I don't want to take them to court or fall out with my family over money. I do have my shares legally held but have no access to anything else.
Is there some clever way of going about this without falling out?