At common law, assignment of a partner’s interest in the business—for example, as a mortgage in return for a loan—would result in a legal dissolution of the partnership. Thus in the absence of UPA, which changed the law, Baker’s decision to mortgage his interest in the car dealership in return for a $20,000 loan from his bank would mean that the three—Able, Baker, and Carr—were no longer partners. Section 27 of UPA declares that assignment of an interest in the partnership neither dissolves the partnership nor entitles the assignee “to interfere in the management or administration of the partnership business or affairs, or to require any information or account of partnership transactions, or to inspect the partnership books.” The assignment merely entitles the assignee to receive whatever profits the assignor would have received—this is the assignor’s transferable interest. 1 Under UPA, this interest is assignable. 2
Under RUPA, the same distinction is made between a partner’s interest in the partnership and a partner’s transferable interest. The Official Comment to Section 101 reads as follows: “‘Partnership interest’ or ‘partner’s interest in the partnership’ is defined to mean all of a partner’s interests in the partnership, including the partner’s transferable interest and all management and other rights. A partner’s ‘transferable interest’ is a more limited concept and means only his share of the profits and losses and right to receive distributions, that is, the partner’s economic interests.” 3
This transferable interest is assignable under RUPA 503 (unless the partners agree to restrict transfers, Section 103(a)). It does not, by itself, cause the dissolution of the partnership; it does not entitle the transferee to access to firm information, to participate in running the firm, or to inspect or copy the books. The transferee is entitled to whatever distributions the transferor partner would have been entitled to, including, upon dissolution of the firm, the net amounts the transferor would have received had there been no assignment.
RUPA Section 101(b)(3) confers standing on a transferee to seek a judicial dissolution and winding up of the partnership business as provided in Section 801(6), thus continuing the rule of UPA Section 32(2). But under RUPA 601(4)(ii), the other partners may by unanimous vote expel a partner who has made “a transfer of all or substantially all of that partner’s transferable interest in the partnership, other than a transfer for security purposes [as for a loan].” Upon a creditor foreclosure of the security interest, though, the partner may be expelled.
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