It's not even remotely like your pregancy comparison. Give your head a shake, man!

Here, even though I cannot believe that someone in the Western Hemisphere does not know what the hell the term "common law marriage" means, I've done a search for you, but really encourage you to get out a bit more! ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common-law_marriage

That's like saying that a woman is a LITTLE BIT PREGNANT

Either she is PREGNANT or she is NOT

Either she is MARRIED or she is NOT......LEGALLY MARRIED ?????

COMMON LAW MARRIED ???????? What the hell is that ???????

Of course, you could've assumed (a bit more logically) that I meant legally married and not COMMON LAW MARRIED.

Right? LOL

< First thing - your wife. If you are legally married........>

I don't think I know of anyone who is ILLEGALLY married.

Unless, of course, a man has two wives. Then he is known as a BIGAMIST

And, of course, if a man has three wives. Then he is known as a

PIGAMIST

First thing - your wife. If you are legally married, is she not liable for debts under your name?

Secondly, what does it say in your lease regarding transfers? Can the landlord unreasonably withhold consent or refuse consent?

Thirdly, what does is say about threatening to clandestine removal of assets in leased premises? Does it include threatening to remove assets an event of default?

Sometimes it's worth it to call an unreasonable landlord's bluff. But I need to know what these two sections in the lease says.

some one help this person.

Forgot to ask one more thing:

Re settling with cc companies, particularly the one that just issued - to date, I haven't answered any call from either the companies or collection agencies and have made no payments for 6 months. With the demand letter, I'm considering calling the company to start negotiating settlement but am not sure if that's a smart move or not. I'd guess they'd want proof of ability to pay settlement (i.e. we'd take it out of business cashflow or wife's loc or something) - from a straight personal ability to pay, they'd discover no assets, no bank account, no income on my part unless I declared working for the wholesale business as a salary which would then open the door to lien against wages in future with judgement?

I guess the big question is do I or don't I break the silence at this point - what benefit/risk is there to start talking (and of course not signing or paying anything) at this point? The first settlement didn't involve any signing on my part aside from calling in to accept their written offer plus sending in post dated cheques.

Hi all, I'm looking to get feedback on a few areas before making informed decisions and approaching the banks/cc/cra. It's a bit complicated so enjoy the read.

My wife and I started an incorporated retail company in BC and expanded to a separate incorporated wholesale company a year later. A year ago, I signed over all my shares to my wife for both corporations, removed her as director and placed myself as director of both corps. I personally have 0 assets, no bank account, no income aside from declaring part of my wife's income as a consulting fee (no cheques change hands and cra is ok with this for the past 10 years). My wife has stellar credit and our home, car, rental homes and any personal security business debt is signed by her. I'm reasonably sure any debt I personally have is 100% uncollectable and none of it is co-signed by her at all so she should be untouchable (the only question is how far cra could go collecting gst/remittances if we don't pay). Our businesses were incorporated in BC and continue to operate as BC corporations. Our wholesale business is national and we're considering moving the corp to Ontario. All personal debts were incurred living in BC but we moved residence to Ontario 2 years ago so as far as I know, Ontario's 2 year statute applies.

Here's the situation:

1. the wholesale company is nice and profitable, call it 3K/week. This all goes to paying down accounts payable incurred from supporting the retail business in 2008.

2. the first retail location cashflows ok but is languishing due to absentee owner and increased competition. We've been trying to sell for a year (lots of buyers want it) but the landlord has been ridiculously uncooperative and there's nothing we can do within the lease to push the issue. It's looking like we'll finally be able to sell by the end of the year but the landlord might be just teasing us. We've set this up as an asset sale so the corp remains with the second location.

3. the second retail location has been killing us. It was supposed to have been a licensed (semi-franchise) location but that fell through at the last minute so we scrambled and put together enough to finish the build out and get open. Unfortunately that meant taking on a bunch of debt:

- 100K CSBL (wife guarantor)
- 10K operating line (wife guarantor)
- 2x5k visas same bank as csbl and operating line (wife guarantor)
- call it 70K in credit card debt (low interest initially anticipating paying it down from cash flow) in my name only - how the cc companies decided I qualified is beyond me i.e. max 25k earnings on T1 for last 10 years.
- another 50K visa from same bank as csbl we use as slush fund (pay off every month in full) for wholesale company - was initially in my name, added wife as extra card, bank automagically made her a co-applicant (thanks for that), we finally just last month transferred it entirely to her name so I'm not attached

3 cont. Long story short, this location continues to lose pretty much all the profits from both companies and then some. Ideally, we'd shut it down and walk away but the lease was done tied to the corporation so if we did so, they could go after the first location. Hence the asset sale of location

1 - continue operating for a couple of months, gradually liquidate equipment to pay debts and then walk away from the lease. The wrench in the works is the length of time its taken to sell location 1 - had we foreseen this, we would have walked from both locations a year ago and midnight run'd the assets.

4. I stopped paying the 70K worth of credit cards 6 months ago and followed the wolf at the door's advice since I am essentially collection proof and have no need for credit over the next 5+ years. Here are the cc breakdown
-MBNA 15K+, they just out of the blue offered a settlement of 4500 over 4 months and I accepted
-Capital One - 20Kish - I just yesterday received a 10 day demand letter from Rubenstein Siegel on this one so it should get interesting. I haven't responded to any calls or letters to date.
-Citicard two cards totalling about 30K - currently in collections and ignoring phone calls and letters
-Amex - 10Kish gone to collections and ignoring calls/letters.

5. Current on all bank debts - csbl/loc/bank cc's paid in full monthly.

6. 40K or so in gst owing by end of this year (about 20k from 2009) plus behind about 14K on remittances (9K in a dumb bookkeeping error last year, rest from a bounced cheque this year). So far no action from cra but expect a bank account freeze at some point. I've set up accounts at a second bank in case this does happen just so we can continue operations until everything sells. We have some equipment selling next week that we can either pay down the remittances or pay the distribution company to pay down debts there.

7. Cashflow wise, we're ok with my wife's income covering personal everything and keeping the retail locations open provided the government doesn't force our hand on the gst/remittances. We're not however yet in a situation where we could take on paying down any debts aggressively. As settlement offers come in, we can split money off somewhere to accept and pay them.

That about sums up the situation. We're trying to:

a.preserve the wholesale company, effectively bankrupt the retail company and sell off the assets all while making sure our personal assets in my wife's name are not affected. Officially bankrupting the retail company would have to be forced by a creditor.

b.On my personal side, the goal is to settle all cc debts. Bankruptcy would likely be more expensive due to my wife making 150K+ (although T1 usually gets down to about 40-50K net due to self employ expenses) so I'd have to declare that I don't know my wife's income. Plus I figure I can settle out and rebuild faster than bankrupting.

c.On the business debt side, the goal is to not cause trouble with our bank that also carries our rental property and personal mortgages.

Here are the questions:

1. Who would be the best person to consult with regarding our situation with CSBL and CRA - my personal credit cards are pretty straightforward (settle or get sued and wait out the statute and then settle). CSBL we need to know how to approach the bank re selling off the business assets i.e. is it a general lien against assets. The big question is how the 25% liablility works if we're not forced into bankruptcy. We figure worst case scenario is pay off the csbl on the schedule set out via the distribution company to keep the bank happy. CRA side - we really need to know how exposed my wife is as an owner plus if the distribution company could somehow be declared non-arms length or something and be exposed. Sure we'd love to get out of paying off the cra debts but anticipate having to pay them eventually. Need to know if they can go after my wife directly or if only me as the director (the CA friends I've consulted think it's just me exposed). Also on penalties, aside from the initial late payment penalties already imposed, are there further fines aside from interest (which is a cheap loan essentially at this point)? Those answers would dictate what to do with equipment sales proceeds.

2. On my personal cc side - which of the debts/companies is likely to sue vs. settle? If they do sue, any advice on handling it - i.e. should I try to negotiate once served? I figure the only defence is if they can't produce my original signed cc application which I understand is quite often the case. Once judgement is obtained, it too is uncollectable (please correct me if I'm wrong) - does that re-start statutes to 2 years from judgement? And if they obtain judgement, what next? Do I have to go to a hearing on my ability to pay or some such? Can they deem (as in bankruptcy) me to be earning x salary for running my wife's business and go after that somehow? Will they settle after judgement if they deem I can't pay anyway?

3. Could CRA or the cc companies look at how this is all structured and invoke some kind of avoidance ruling to rope my wife in? We set things up to put the risk more on my side but we never intended to have a business failure.

4. If we cease operations on the cafe side in totatlity and let it get forced to bankruptcy, how badly will it affect our relationship with our bank? We'd have to personally cover the loc's and 25% of the csbl and the credit cards but the concern would be calling any other loans/mortgages/business loc's. The bank has no risk in this at all as the csbl remainder is government backed but the question is how to force that to happen without causing waves. For the 40K or so remaining (assuming the 25% means a full 25K of the 100K initial balance, not 25% of the remaining balance), we'd just roll it to the distribution company and pay it off if there was a problem. I suspect just being up front with the bank would be best but am nervous to do so as they might prevent asset sales or force all asset sales to go towards the csbl before anything else. Big question is if its fraudulent to sell off assets without telling them and then trying to fix the problem later (depends on whether csbl is a general lien, a specific equipment lien, or neither).

5. Lastly is the lease on location 2 which is corporately backed. There's no clause preventing us from selling assets or the first location but if we do so and then walk on the lease, can they go after the buyers of the first locations assets? The CA we know that specialized in corp insolvencies and trustees says it virtually never happens and they'd have to force bankruptcy on the corp (and incur the trustee expenses which would not be remotely worth it for them). It also used to be that cra would virtually never go after gst personally but that is apparently changing quite a bit. Anyone have any recent experience on the midnight run front?

Enjoy chewing on this one. We sure haven't. We've been pretty lucky that nothing's been forced upon us as of yet but that could change any day if any creditor decides to push any issues. We know our worst case scenario is bankrupting both corps and paying the personal liabilities of call it 100K. Painful but do-able as I'd also just go back to a corporate finance/managment/sales job of some sort. Ideally we just get through killing off the retail arm (as painlessly as possible - we have no regrets on it but also don't believe in over-paying our way out for one mis-stem i.e. the second location, hence this post) and continue building the wholesale arm.

Thanks all