If your partner is a business owner, are you a director/ shareholder?

[KnobJockey]

I'm not married to my partner, but we have a joint mortgage, a 10 month old, both work and contribute to a joint account. Both of us currently own another property, mine is rented out, his will be sold to fund work on our joint property, at which point we will move my rented house to joint ownership.

DP is now looking at leaving work to become self employed. He will use our joint money to set up, purchase a van, etc, and no doubt things will be slow for a little while. I am a bookkeeper, so will no doubt be involved with invoicing and accounts work, which I expect my time will be paid for.

I'm just mulling over about whether I need a discussion about this me being a director/ shareholder. It is likely to have another partner, so he may want to discuss the situation too.

Anyone been in this position? Are you a partner in the business? Or a b shareholder? Not sure this is the right area to post either.

I haven't discussed this with my DP yet, I have more understanding of this type of stuff, so its usual for me to research first.

The business is a red herring.

He's selling his house to do work on your joint house? NO. He's selling it to pump money into his business, which shouldn't need that much capital if it's successful - he should be able to get efficient funding from a bank. He may use a little of the proceeds to do that work on the house but that's just optics. The house money is for his business. People only pump property money into businesses to prop up failing ones.

On that note, DO NOT SELL YOUR HOUSE. Your own security will go into the same sink hole. I would in fact further separate my finances from him. Ensure you don't have significant joint savings or investments or joint query which could disappear either to prop up the business or in formal administration of a failed company (e.g. to satisfy personal guarantees etc).

Tldr: keep your own house, do not further mingle finances, do not marry him, be very wary of his business's prospects.

My husband has his own business. Just him. I'm not a part of it at all and had never considered it. Should I be?!

@PicsInRed my house is not up for sale, nor will it be. It's rented out, has been for 3 years and will continue to be.

His house is definitely up for sale to fund the extension of our joint property. Has been up for sale before the idea of a business has come up, and won't be used to fund it.

The business is not yet formed, doesn't need capital pumping into it, has no bank funding that needs capital pumping in, has no personal guarantees that are going to require house sale. No joint savings account to be drained as we have just bought a house and financed a maternity leave. Any savings I have are in my name.

OP - You misunderstood my initial sentence re "not a family". If you reread you can see I meant not a family for financial purposes but two separate entities. I then went on to say that once married the business would become a marital asset and you would then have a beneficial interest.

I assume you were skim reading the posts and did not read mine properly and therefore now realise that I was not being rude about unmarried partners with children not being a family.

@SeasonFinale I didn't skim read, but maybe I did misunderstand so thank you for clarifying. The way this was worded:
'You are not a family when you are not married I am afraid but two separate entities for financial purposes.' really did make it feel like you were telling me we were not a family. Perhaps a better way of wording it would have been that he is not financially responsible for me if we are not married, as we are a family regardless of any financial situation.

But thank you for coming back and clarifying. I'm sorry if I came across as abrupt in that.

OP just make sure you are financially protected if you split as you're not married.