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Comment by GrandMasterBirt | Hacker News Reader

There is a difference. A spouse is your co-founder because the company will affect his/her life just as much. And he/she will be thinking quite abit about the business. I am not sure, however, if your spouse being an official cf is good, and might discourage a third from joining because he/she will feel like the other side of the room hold all the power.

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It goes further than that. It can easily be set up so that the first founder and his wife each get 1/4 and the second founder gets half to balance the power. This is done all the time.

The trouble comes when two founders own 1/2 each and one dies or gets divorced and then the spouse asserts an ownership (or worse, control) claim against the startup.

Here in the US, if not specifically set up otherwise, my wife would automatically get my shares (and voting power) in the event of my death. If she then wanted to "just sell the damn thing for whatever we can get for it now" just to get some quick cash, there would be little the other founder(s) could do about it if I had sufficient shares.

Here in the US, if not specifically set up otherwise, my wife would automatically get my shares

Your heirs (or anybody else you wanted to designate in your will) would get them even if you weren't married.

A simple and smart business move with a two-founder setup like this is life insurance held by the other partner, and a buy/sell agreement. That way, if you die, your spouse gets the cash, the other funder gets the biz. In the vast majority of co-founded companies, something like this makes sense, and term insurance is cheap, if you're under 40.

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