Business Partnership Disagreement?

Business partnership in Texas. My business partner put up the start-up capital to start the business and in return for doing so he received 55% ownership in the company. The idea for the business was mine and I had the business and professional expertise to run the business; in exchange for this I received 45% ownership. We agreed that I was to receive a monthly payment of $6,000 for managing the company while my business partner waited for the company to be profitable before drawing any form of payment. After a year and a half our business was able to pay back all the initial funding capital back to my business partner. In addition to collecting all his funding monies my business partner think he is owed the money that I collected monthly for managing the company for the last year and a half. This is news to me as we had never previously discussed this and it certainly did not come up when we started the company nor is this stipulated in our partnership agreement. His rational is that because it was taken out as a “partner draw” he is owed this money, and after he collects this money, then we can start to split the profits according to our ownership percentages. The way that I see it is that this was money that was treated as an expense this whole time and it was money that was specified in our agreement to be paid in exchange for my managing the company full time (my partner spends about 15%-20% of his time on company related issues). I managed this business to the point where my partner has collected all his funding monies plus the company has a few hundred thousand in profit in the bank, not to mention that the current value of the company is over 2.5 million. Meaning that in exchange for my salary I made my business partner “business equity” that is now worth well over a million to him. How can my business partner be due my pay for managing the company if it’s not stipulated in our agreement?


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