Set the rules between co-owners before issues arise

The biggest problem is usually not day-to-day cooperation while everyone agrees, but what happens when views change. Without a written agreement, owners can end up arguing about voting thresholds, director appointments, funding expectations, transfer rights, dividend decisions or whether someone can leave and sell to an outsider. Those issues often surface at stressful moments such as growth, underperformance or a founder exit. A clear agreement gives the business a set of rules for those situations instead of leaving major points to assumption, memory or informal messages.

It commonly deals with ownership percentages, voting rights, reserved matters, appointment and removal of directors or managers, funding obligations, distributions, restrictions on transfers, pre-emptive rights, drag or tag style sale provisions, confidentiality, restraint-related clauses where appropriate, dispute procedures and exit events. Some agreements also address what happens on death, incapacity or default by an owner. The final content depends on your structure and whether the agreement is for a company, unit-based arrangement, or a more bespoke ownership setup.

The level of customisation usually turns on who the owners are and how they expect the business to operate. For example, a two-founder startup with equal voting may need deadlock mechanisms, while a business with passive investors may need stronger reserved matters and transfer controls. It also matters whether owners contribute different assets, work in the business, lend money to it, or expect future investment rounds. Those commercial details shape the agreement far more than the document title alone.

Sometimes a template can help you spot common clauses, but it may not deal properly with your ownership dynamics. Templates often assume a standard company structure and may not reflect unequal decision rights, staged vesting, investor protections, family ownership arrangements or agreed exit triggers. They can also leave gaps between the agreement and your constitution or other corporate records. If there is any real possibility of future investment, founder departure, or disagreement over control, a tailored agreement is usually the more sensible option.

We gather the key commercial points, review any existing ownership documents if relevant, and prepare the agreement around the structure you want to put in place. You may already know the broad deal but still need help turning it into workable legal wording on voting, transfers or exits. Timing depends on how settled those points are and whether multiple owners need to confirm instructions. The service covers the agreement drafting and the stated amendment process, but not ongoing representation if negotiations continue after delivery.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Shareholders and Unitholders Agreement service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.