Legal Question in Business Law in California

Ask your insurance company, or bonding company, not your lawyer. It is their opinion that counts.

It seems to me that you may need some basic business-organization efforts or formalities to be handled -- not just for the DMV bond, but for your general business organization and partner relationship. First, you speak of your business associate as a "partner." This is a very charged term in the legal world. "Partners" are, technically, people involved as the co-owners of a partnership business -- often a general partnership, but sometimes a limited partnership or a limited-liability partnership. However, in informal parlance, people associated in a corporation or LLC may refer to each other as "partners," even though, more correctly, they should call themselves "co-owners" "stockholders" "co-promoters" or something that doesn't suggest that their business is organized as a partnership.

I'm quite sure the DMV has appropriate procedures and requirements for bonding true partnership, as well as other forms of business organization. Ask them -- but not until you are clear on what your business is organized as.

Please talk to Steve Swartz at [email protected].