So Where Were We...

Oh Yeah! We get to Canada... Our partner, who helped move us, is suddenly stricken with 'everything's mine' syndrome and is obviously uncomfortable sharing the farm with us. She has basically made us feel very unwelcome.

Really!

After we 'treated' them to Disneyland, Magic Mountain, Universal Studios, Sea Word, The Long Beach Aquarium, The San Diego Zoo, various Mexican Riviera cruses and The L.A. County Museum of Natural History (my favorite). And of course Hollywood including first class theater entertainment. My parents are elite members of the 'Civic Light Opera'.

So we called it quits...

The Partnership Is Dissolved...

Well... After all the dust settled it was clear that there was to be no reconciliation between us so we had no choice but to dissolve the partnership and divvy up the assets. I guess a blessing to Shauna and I is that our 'former' partner took such poor care of the property that it wasn't valued very high so we decided to buy her out.

I was hoping the negotiation would go better that it did. Even though we financed the entire operation and our partner and her child for over fifteen years she was blind to this when we came to an agreement to buy her out of her interest. All she could think about was to get her share (half) of what she thought the property was worth and Shauna and I have come way to far to quit now.

What our partner didn't understand was that technically she didn't even own half the property out right. The reason we partnered up on the property was that she couldn't meet the payment obligation because of the poor (crooked) deal she made in acquiring it. And she needed us to help secure a bank loan to pay it off. So actually the bank owned the difference and according to the legal title she actually owned maybe forty percent at most. Meaning nobody actually owned a half interest in the farm. She clearly owned more than us however she also still owed on the loan, like Shauna and I did, and Shauna and I had been paying for most of it. And the feed. And the vet bills (when she would allow for a vet). And the taxes. And the repairs (what little she did).

The real disappointment of all this is that Our partner never even paid for the farm. She had made some stupid deal with some people that, knowing her, naturally figured that she would pay them a bunch of money on a (initially) great deal and then never be able to come up with the rest (balloon payment) so they would get the property back and still have the original money (sharks). And to top that off the original investment money came from her Mother. She never contributed even a penny of her own money purchasing the farm (not totally true but close enough). But still it was clear that the farm was never going to move forward with her anchoring it to the past. So bye bye partner.

Now in order to pull this off I had to bargain to pay half now and pay the other half in a year. My apprehension was because as a result of the change to the property title Shauna and I now also had to renegotiate the loan (we still needed to carry it) and because of our current status this turned out to be impossible. Therefore we had to secure the loan with the remainder of the cash we had. Which we also owed our partner. Big mistake! Ugh! But trying to explain the finances to our partner and how this is not a fair deal (in her state of mind) was going to be futile. So we decided to pay her off and move on.

Is It Just Me Or Would You Feel A Little Insulted...

Here's the real kicker... If our partner paid her legal tax burden as we did then, combined, we all probably paid our respective governments more then we paid each other.

Ha ha!