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A comment on Results of the GitHub Investigation. Parent comment

Re:Results of the GitHub Investigation by GauntletWizard on Monday April 21, 2014 @05:08PM (#7623887)
What about de-facto board members? Tom was on GitHub's board, it was/is a small company, I don't get how "founder's wife" is not a suitably trusted position. I mean, clearly a bad call in this case, but hindsight is 20/20, and in my small business the husbands of my co-founders are de-facto employees (And in fact board members with significant proxy voting power, simply by state law of common property).

Edit: I looked it up; California, too, is a community property state. Theresa was absolutely an effective board member.

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Re:Results of the GitHub Investigation by gamblor956 on Monday April 21, 2014 @06:36PM (#7624426)
That's not how community property works. Teresa effectively owned an indivisible half of Tom's Github stock via the community property laws, but this does not make her a board member. Board members are selected by the company pursuant to various legal mechanisms not subject to community property laws because a board position is not a "property."
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Re:Results of the GitHub Investigation by dsl on Monday April 21, 2014 @05:43PM (#7624141)
You should really get a better lawyer.
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Re:Results of the GitHub Investigation by wankerrific on Monday April 21, 2014 @06:08PM (#7624283)
Most corporate startup lawyers have founder's spouses sign release forms for to clearly indicate that they do not have some claim to ownership or equity.
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Re:Results of the GitHub Investigation by cmapes on Monday April 21, 2014 @11:31PM (#7625640)
This.

I just drafted a stock purchase agreement for my business partner and I on our new startup and one of the basic boilerplate additions to the stock purchase / vesting agreement is a spousal agreement to the terms of the purchase.

The communal property law only relates during a divorce were the shares are split up between the couple by the courts. Any decently written stock purchase agreement has a first right of refusal for the company to purchase back those shares in the event of an involuntary transfer.

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