hello. my business partner and i (both operating as freelancers) completed, between the two of us, about $19,000 of work for which we still haven't received payment. our last invoices were sent for may of this year (we worked under the assumption of payment for march, april, may, and june). my outstanding balance is about $9,000, and my business partner's is about $10,000. the non-paying client is a personal friend of mine who is building an application that i truly believe in, but he hasn't been able to secure funding for quite a while.
i would like to keep the business relationship as amicable as possible while ensuring that my business partner and i are able to collect on our debt. has anyone else been in a situation like this? i am going to propose a monthly payment plan to the client. that would make us both comfortable enough to avoid a formal legal process, so long as the payment plan is abided by. barring that, what should we do / what have you done? the amount owed to us each independently is greater than the $7,500 limit for CA small claims courts. is there a way i can sue him for part of the debt so as to keep it in small claims court and minimize my legal costs by representing myself? or do we each need to file a formal lawsuit for the sum total of our individual unpaid invoices and get a lawyer? each unpaid invoice individually (there are three) is less than the $7,500 small claims limit; can we file three small claims lawsuits for each invoice? the time period for which we were not paid spans (mostly) from march to may of this year. i'd appreciate any insight; especially from experience. i really don't want to sue this guy, but i'd be a lot more comfortable with a formal judgment against him than with his vague promises to pay when he secures funding. anyone? -neal -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
