Short Answer
If you believe a business partner is taking company money, do not begin with an accusation you cannot yet prove. Begin with the records. Preserve bank statements, card activity, accounting access, payroll, reimbursement requests, and messages about the disputed transactions. Florida law may provide claims involving fiduciary duties, company records, an accounting, or emergency relief, but the right response depends on the entity, the governing agreement, and where the money went. The first objective is to stop further loss without damaging the business or your credibility.
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Tell Aaron what happened. What you have seen, what you can still access, and whether anyone else knows you are asking.
When This Becomes Urgent
- Transfers are continuing, money is moving to a related company, or the operating account is being depleted.
- You have lost access to banking, accounting software, merchant accounts, or tax records.
- Payroll, rent, loan payments, or a major closing may fail because funds are missing.
What Usually Goes Wrong
- Sending an angry theft accusation before the financial trail is organized.
- Trying to take the money back through self help, which can create claims against both owners.
- Waiting for the next monthly statement while access and electronic records disappear.
Why Miami Experience Matters
Miami companies often mix fast moving revenue, real estate, hospitality income, family ownership, and international payments. A lawyer who has handled Miami ownership disputes knows which transactions are ordinary for the business and which ones signal diversion. Local experience also matters when the useful remedy is not simply a damages claim months later, but a focused records demand, an accounting, or emergency court relief before the money leaves reach.
Local proof: Miami Beach Bar Association leadership
What to Have Ready
- The operating, partnership, or shareholder agreement and all amendments.
- Bank statements, wire confirmations, card statements, and accounting exports.
- A short timeline identifying each questionable transaction and who approved it.
- Tax returns, financial statements, payroll reports, and related company records.
- Messages in which the partner explains, denies, or discusses the payments.
What Typically Happens Next
Counsel usually starts by confirming ownership and authority, then builds a clean transaction timeline. The next move may be a targeted demand for records, a demand to restore controls, negotiations over repayment or separation, or litigation if assets remain at risk.
An experienced litigator will also decide what not to allege until the evidence supports it. That restraint often preserves credibility while the financial case is being built.
How do I know if my partner is actually stealing or just spending badly?
The distinction matters enormously and most owners cannot make it from the outside.
Bad judgment looks like: unprofitable decisions made openly, spending you disagreed with but knew about, compensation you resent but approved, and losses documented in the ordinary books. Misappropriation looks different. It tends to involve concealment rather than disagreement: transactions you were not told about, vendors that trace back to the other owner, records that stop being available around the time you started asking, and explanations that change when you press.
Concealment is the signal, not the amount. A small transfer nobody mentioned is a worse sign than a large loss everyone argued about.
Where the pattern is a hidden books problem rather than a taking problem, start at partner hiding money in the company books.
What is the first thing I should do, today?
Preserve, then look, then act. In that order.
Preserve first. Get a written preservation demand out. Records get deleted, cloud access gets revoked, and accountants get replaced, and all three tend to happen shortly after the other owner realizes you are asking questions. A preservation letter is inexpensive and it frequently decides the case later. The Law Offices of Aaron Resnick, P.A. treats it as the first move on a missing money matter rather than a formality.
Secure what you can already reach. Download the bank statements, the accounting file, the tax returns, and the capital account records while you still have routine access, not after.
Then look. A structured review of where money actually went beats a confrontation every time.
Do not act on your own. Which brings us to the next section, and it is the one that matters most.
What should I absolutely not do?
The mistakes in this branch are expensive, fast, and almost entirely avoidable.
Do not confront them before you have the records. A confrontation is the starting gun for document destruction. Once you have said what you suspect, everything you have not already collected becomes harder to get.
Do not take money back. Self help recovery, moving funds to an account you control, or paying yourself a catch up distribution converts a strong claim into a mutual dispute, and it hands the other side the story they need.
Do not remove them from the accounts or the premises. Even where you have the authority, doing it unilaterally at this stage looks like the thing you are accusing them of.
Do not pay your personal legal fees from company funds. That becomes its own claim on top of the original one.
Do not wait. Delay is the quietest of these and often the costliest. Money becomes harder to trace, and a long gap undermines any later argument that the situation was urgent enough to require emergency relief.
What claims does Florida law actually give me?
Missing money cases usually resolve into a recognizable set, and they are typically pleaded together rather than one at a time.
Breach of fiduciary duty, where an owner put personal interest ahead of the company or the other owners. This is often the strongest claim in the group because the duty arises from the relationship itself, so it survives even where the agreement is silent or badly drafted. Detail at breach of fiduciary duty.
An accounting, which forces a formal reckoning of what came in, what went out, and where it went. Frequently the most useful first remedy because it converts suspicion into a documented record.
Conversion, and in some circumstances civil theft, where company assets or funds were taken outright.
Breach of the operating, partnership, or shareholder agreement, where the document said one thing and an owner did another.
Fraud or misrepresentation, where the money question traces back to what was said before it was invested.
Which of these fit is decided by the documents and the money trail, not by how angry anyone is. Florida's business entity provisions sit in the business organization chapters of the Florida Statutes.
How much proof do I need before I can do anything?
Less than most owners think to start, and more than they expect to finish.
To open a matter and send a records demand: a credible basis. Specific transactions you cannot explain, a pattern of concealment, a refusal to produce records. You do not need to have proven the case.
To obtain emergency relief: substantially more. Courts generally want specific evidence that assets are being moved or dissipated right now, not a general concern about honesty. The threshold is covered at injunctions against a business partner.
To win: the money trail, documented.
The gap between the first and the third is exactly what a records demand and an accounting are for. What the record has to show is set out at the evidence needed to prove partner fraud.
Can I get the money frozen before it disappears?
Sometimes, and it depends on evidence rather than urgency of feeling.
Emergency relief becomes realistic where there is specific evidence that funds are being moved or dissipated, that records are being destroyed, that assets are being sold or encumbered without authority, or that a transaction is about to close over your objection. It requires proof, it requires speed, and it generally requires that you have not sat on the facts for months.
It is not available because a partner is untrustworthy, or because the relationship has broken down, or because you want leverage. The mechanics are at freezing a partner's access to company assets.
What if they stopped paying me instead of taking anything?
That is a different problem with a different answer, and owners frequently conflate the two.
Withholding distributions can be entirely lawful. Distributions are usually governed by the agreement and by the company's actual financial position, and an owner is not automatically entitled to a payment on demand. It becomes actionable when it is used as a squeeze, when it is applied unequally among owners, when the company is in fact distributing to some and not others, or when it is paired with removing your access to the information that would let you check.
The distinction is covered at can a partner withhold distributions.
What if I am wrong?
Worth asking out loud, because a meaningful share of these matters end with an explanation rather than a claim.
Money that looks missing is sometimes a loan that was documented somewhere you did not look, an owner draw characterized differently by the accountant, a tax distribution, a payment on a guarantee, or genuinely bad bookkeeping. A records review answers this before you accuse anyone, which is one of the strongest arguments for doing the documentary work first.
Being wrong quietly costs a records review. Being wrong loudly can cost the business, the relationship, and a defamation exposure that did not exist before you said it.
Where the suspicion is real but unproven, start at what to do if you suspect business partner fraud.
Does this become a criminal matter?
It can, and that is not usually the owner's decision to drive.
Some conduct in this area can carry criminal exposure as well as civil liability. But a criminal referral is a separate track with a separate decision maker, it does not recover money on the owner's timetable, and threatening one to gain advantage in a civil negotiation creates its own serious problems.
The practical point: the civil recovery path and the criminal path are different tools with different owners, and conflating them is a mistake. The realistic focus for an owner who wants their money back is the civil claim.
What does this cost and how long does it take?
The honest answer is that it is priced on what is at risk and on what the other side does, not on a menu. What can be said plainly is the shape of it.
A preservation demand and a records demand are inexpensive and fast, measured in days to weeks, and they frequently produce the information that determines everything after. An accounting or a negotiated resolution runs longer. A contested claim litigated to a resolution is measured in many months or more, and most settle before that point.
The number that actually matters is how fast the money is moving, because that is what determines whether the cheap path is still available.
Where this fits in a business divorce
Missing money is one branch of a business divorce, and it is the branch most likely to be running on a clock. The full map of the other situations is at business divorce explained.
If money is moving right now, or records have started disappearing, the call should happen before the next development rather than after it.
Related Questions and Reading
- What Can I Do If My Partner Locks Me Out?
- Can I Inspect the Company's Books and Records in Florida?
- Can I Get an Injunction Against My Business Partner?
- partnership and shareholder disputes
- breach of fiduciary duty
- How Do I End a Business Partnership in Florida?
- Browse all Ask Aaron answers
Disclaimer
This is general information, not legal advice. Viewing this page or contacting the firm does not create an attorney-client relationship. Deadlines can be short. If your matter is time sensitive, call the office at 305-672-7495.
