New under RUPA is the ability of partnerships, partners, or even nonpartners to issue and file “statements” that announce to the world the establishment or denial of authority. The goal here is to control the reach of apparent authority. There are several kinds of statements authorized.
A statement of partnership authority is allowed by RUPA Section 303. It specifies the names of the partners authorized, or not authorized, to enter into transactions on behalf of the partnership and any other matters. The most important goal of the statement of authority is to facilitate the transfer of real property held in the name of the partnership. A statement must specify the names of the partners authorized to execute an instrument transferring that property.
A statement of denial, RUPA Section 304, operates to allow partners (and persons named as partners) an opportunity to deny any fact asserted in a statement of partnership authority.
A statement of dissociation, RUPA Section 704, may be filed by a partnership or a dissociated partner, informing the world that the person is no longer a partner. This tells the world that the named person is no longer in the partnership.
There are three other statements authorized: a statement of qualificationestablishes that the partnership has satisfied all conditions precedent to the qualification of the partnership as a limited liability partnership; a statement of foreign qualification means a limited liability partnership is qualified and registered to do business in a state other than that in which it is originally registered; and a statement of amendment or cancellation of any of the foregoing. 1 Limited liability partnerships are taken up in Hybrid Business Forms .
Generally, RUPA Section 105 allows partnerships to file these statements with the state secretary of state’s office; those affecting real estate need to be filed with (or also with) the local county land recorder’s office. The notices bind those who know about them right away, and they are constructive notice to the world after ninety days as to authority to transfer real property in the partnership’s name, as to dissociation, and as to dissolution. However, as to other grants or limitations of authority, “only a third party who knows or has received a notification of a partner’s lack of authority in an ordinary course transaction is bound.” 2
Since RUPA is mostly intended to provide the rules for the small, unsophisticated partnership, it is questionable whether these arcane “statements” are very often employed.
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