Married and business

[Chance112]

I was told that to have shared rights over a business venture, you either had to be married or have the same last name. Is this true? Please help...

[Rolig Loon]

There is no such thing as "shared rights over a business" in SL.  All businesses are owned by individuals.  A group or combination of individuals cannot have a joint account, so all your money has to be in one person's own account.  If you want to have a private arrangement between you about how you split profits and share responsibilities, that's fine, but it has nothing to do with Second Life.  That's your business.

The only sense in which you can have "shared rights" is that you can create assets and share them as members of a group, so that each member can edit and copy them.  Unless the items are actually deeded to the group, they will still remain the property of single people, but at least the group can share in building and adapting them.  That's true for land, as well, since you can deed land to a group and then set access and other permissions for group members.

As for that bit about last names .... unless you are at least 6 years old, your last name is "Resident".

[Syo Emerald]

Also something like marriage doesn't officially exist in SL. You can partner with someone, but that has no impact behond showing each others name in a box on your profile. Last names never had a purpose and six years ago they stopped being available for new accounts anyway.

[Lindal Kidd]

Chance, to add to what the others have said:

It's quite possible to have a business partnership in Second Life.  I've done it more than once.  But you need to be careful.

Your business partner is anonymous (so are you, to them).  You don't know who they are, or where they live in Real Life.  If they take your money and vanish from the grid, you have no recourse.

Only one person has access to that person's account.  There are no "shared access" accounts.  So, you have to trust one partner to hold all the money, and report faithfully on income and expenditures.  An alternative is to create an alt account to be the "bank account" for the partnership, and both partners know the account's password.  However, this doesn't really solve the problem.  Either partner can change the password whenever they want, take all the money, and vanish.

Assets besides money can be tricky, too.  If your partnership is for creating content, will both of you get full permission versions of everything the other creates?  Only one account can "own" a store on the Marketplace.  Land can be group owned, but only one person in the group should be in the Owner role so that any disputes can be clearly resolved...and that person has the ability to toss anyone else out of the group and deny them rights to the land.

All of the above should give you a clue that business partnerships in SL are quite risky.  You should only deal with people you know well and trust, and even then, never risk more money than you are prepared to lose.  If there IS a significant amount of money involved, you should exchange RL contact information with your partner(s) and draw up an enforceable, Real Life partnership agreement.

[Feliciana Zabaleta]

Last names have been gone from SL for a very long time around 6 years. You also do not have to be married as "Marriage" really doesn't exist in Second Life. You can partner with another person but you are not legally married in any legal sense. As for busniess ventures be very, very careful about those and only deal with a very trusted person, because if anything goes sour you have aboslutely no recourse.

Hope this helps out and good luck on your ventures.

 

Felicia