Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Financial structure advice needed for forming group

[Michael Barrett (mbarrett]

Tom Hammer asked:
> Could you please inform us how you structure(d) your
> membership and membership contribution? Please let us
> know what worked and what you would have done
> differently. Thank you.

My only contribution to this thread will be to encourage Tom and his group 
to keep a hard nosed attitude to this task, try to think of as many 
contingencies as they can, write it all down very explicitly and get people 
to sign up to the agreements.
Regrettably my community has suffered substantial long drawn out emotional 
and financial pain and grief due to loosy-goosy warm huggy agreements.  What 
was written down (before my joining the group) has since been deemed 
essentially worthless by an attorney and most of the potentially contentious 
stuff was omitted anyway - I suspect because "we love and trust each other 
so we don't need to worry about it!"   Assuming that you will always be able 
to "work something out" is, my opinion, a very bad idea.

So my recommendation is to persist in trying to define firm responses to all 
cases - specifically addressing the "difficult" cases - what happens when 
folks drop out for good reasons and bad, when employment is lost or a 
business fails, when folks (or relatives of folks) die, when families break 
up, when the estranged spouse reappears and disagrees, when illness occurs, 
and, last but not least, when the whole project takes far, far, far longer 
than you ever thought possible - such that kids grow up, aging parents get 
to need care, etc., i.e. all the events of life occur.   While kindness and 
charity will hopefully find acceptable solutions, having an explicit, 
unambiguous default response to "difficult" events, on paper, from square 
one, can make for clarity, and hopefully avoid destructive disagreements.

The frank discussion and setting down of default responses to difficult 
situations can give idealistic dreamers something to think about, and 
hopefully deter later arguements.   And while I have no enthusiasm for 
attorneys, having an attorney look over your "agreements" is almost 
certainly necessary if you want your agreements to be enforceable.

Best wishes and good luck.
MB