A partnership is the only business structure your clients use that no statute creates. No registration, no filing, nothing in writing. The liability shield comes from the Act, and a partnership has no Act. Worse, a court can find a partnership between people who never used the word. This article explains how partnerships arise by conduct, how liability escalates to the sequestration of every partner's private estate, and where the fee-earning work sits for the accountant who spots it first.

This is a tighter cut of the standfirst already in the Word document. If you want the two to differ so the excerpt does not read as a duplicate on the category page, say so and I will rewrite the in-article version to open on the two brothers instead.

Your client's director signs the back of a customer's promissory note. The bank wanted a signature before it would discount the paper. Everyone called it a formality.

Eighteen months later the customer collapses. The bank does not chase the customer. It chases your client, and it can have judgment before any trial on the merits.

Cheques stopped clearing at the end of 2020, and most practitioners filed the Bills of Exchange Act 34 of 1964 under history at the same time. The cheque died. The Act did not.

Promissory notes still run SME credit. Signatures still land on the back.

The Minister says petrol should cost R14, not R20. His department is now re-deriving a formula that ran on autopilot for years, escalated annually, never re-examined. Before you nod along, ask the harder question: when did you last re-derive yours? The fee you set in 2022 has moved by CPI. The work has not. A stale pricing formula always costs someone. In the fuel price, it is the payer. In your practice, it is you. Here is the fix.