I am the co-owner of a business and have a partner. We're registered as an S-Corp and have been in existence for about 4 months. My partner decided two weeks ago to quit - she wants to either dissolve the business entirely and sell whatever she can to recoup her losses or have me buy her out and continue on. I've decided to continue with the business on my own and buy her out but we're still in the process of determining exactly what the buy-out agreement will consist of.

Currently we've both invested around $2-3K and worked on the business part-time. I have a full-time job and she was nannying full-time up until recently, as well as being a stay-at-home-mom, so this business has been a side project for both of us. Our business is really not established in any way at this point - we have no product, no customers, basically nothing. I will be left to do all of this on my own. Her responsibilities to date have been handling things like registering our website domain name, getting our tax id, signing us up for a tradeshow and researching tradeshow marketing materials. I've been developing the prototypes of our products and locating suppliers and manufacturers. As part of the buy-out agreement, my partner would like to be reimbursed for her expenses, which I think is totally reasonable, but would also like to be paid for her time for the last four months in addition to receiving a portion of any profits I receive from the company for the next 3-5 years, like 10% annually.

Basically, I have no idea what is reasonable for her to expect and me to offer. I want this to be an amicable split that is beneficial for both of us, but don't want to sell myself short in the process. Obviously getting a lawyer may be the easiest way to go, but I'd like to gather as much information before going down that path. Anyway, if anyone here has any thoughts about it, I'd be happy to hear what you think.