Hi

I am having difficulty getting info for my novel on the following:

1. Child Leukaemia (I have sent a question to SkiTalk, but they have not responded).

2. Business concerning Directorship. I am trying to get a certain part of my plot to tally up with the law and if it is right.
Briefly: husband and wife are directors of their company. Husband meets new lover at the company and together they conspire to ensure wife gets nothing from the business when the husband leave's her. So I am planning on the husband persuading the wife to sell her share of the company to him and resign directorship, so that she can take it easy and do other things. I want to be able to position the husband and lover to say he is leaving his wife and by the way she won't get a penny from the business.

I have tried a business website, to get feedback, but not getting very far as people start saying - the wife wouldn't do that - but I think my plot and characters stand up to this. I just need to try and find out if this did happen would the wife be able to claim anything from the business on divorce.

Business concerning Directorship.

I think would depend on how much the wife was involved in the business, and whether she had money tied up in it. My friend and her husband have a small limited company where he's the Director and she's the Company Secretary and handles the accounts. There are two shares, one each, which gives each of them 50% of the company. Although the wife is not a director, there's no way she's going to give up the share.
If she didn't have anything to do with the accounts, then it is possible that her husband could assign her share to someone else when the accounts are submitted to the Taxman, and Companies house, but she could easily challenged it in court as fraud - assuming she could afford to. Often cases don't come to court because they are too expensive, and her husband could do a deal where he keeps both halves of the company and she keeps a roof over her and the children's heads....


Conversly you can have companies where husband and wife hold 49% each, and there is a sleeping partner (someone who has invested in the company but has no direct dealings in how it is run) with 2%. It would be entirely possible for the husband and sleeping partner to gang up on the wife and have her removed as a director.
You could have a plot thread where the sleeping partner is the wife's best friend, sister-in-law, company accountant, whatever, who then starts an affair with the husband.
But they would still have to pay the wife 49% of the value of the company. Most companies make a loss (at least, on paper) so this may not be very much, if anything.



- NaomiM

<Added>

If the sleeping partner was the company accountant (I know of a local company where this is the case), then she could easily hid the true value of the company from the wife and cheat her out of a proper share.

<Added>

They could persuade the wife that the company is on the verge of bancruptcy and she and the husband would lose everything - being the majority shareholders and liable for the company's debts (although as a "Limited" company that's not strictly true) - so it would be in the family's best interests to swap her 49% for the sleeping partner's 2%.

If she didn't have anything to do with the accounts, then it is possible that her husband could assign her share to someone else when the accounts are submitted to the Taxman, and Companies house, but she could easily challenged it in court as fraud - assuming she could afford to. Often cases don't come to court because they are too expensive, and her husband could do a deal where he keeps both halves of the company and she keeps a roof over her and the children's heads....

Noami - thanks for this advice. I really searched my soul about this part of the plot and thought shall I leave it out, but I really think that it all adds to the drama and I am going to go with the husband changing the tax return fraudently (arrogantly thinking that his wife won't do anything about this - once presented with this information). Dishonesty and fraud runs throughout my novel - so a bit more fraud won't hurt.

Thanks: Beverley.

Well there are plenty of examples of husbands using the family home as security for a business loan and losing the whole lot - and banks are not interested in any wives' claims to have no knowledge of their husbands' business dealings - so plenty of scope for making it as nasty as you like, for the wife.

If the sleeping partner was the company accountant (I know of a local company where this is the case), then she could easily hid the true value of the company from the wife and cheat her out of a proper share. <Added> They could persuade the wife that the company is on the verge of bancruptcy and she and the husband would lose everything - being the majority shareholders and liable for the company's debts (although as a "Limited" company that's not strictly true) - so it would be in the family's best interests to swap her 49% for the sleeping partner's 2%.

Naomi - yes these ideas are good and my original master plan was that the other woman would back the husband up by saying that indeed the business was going down the tubes and suggesting that she sell her shares to raise capital injection and resign her directorship. However, someone on the business website I posted to said that the wife would demand the husband sell some of his shares as well.

I think at the end of the day, it will be how I write it, to make it believable. I'm glad you think like me.

said that the wife would demand the husband sell some of his shares as well.

They might be thinking of a publically quoted company.
If it's just the 3 of them, it's doubtful they could find anyone else willing to buy the shares - they'd have to entice a friend, or an employee, into buying them - especially if the books show it's making a loss.