Legal Question in Investment Law in Florida

Re: Real Estate Investment

The answer has to address two aspects: what are your legal rights, on the one hand, and what can you do to protect and enforce them, as a practical matter, on the other hand.

I would start the analysis by asking whether the business arrangement is indeed a partnership in the formal, legal sense. The term "partner" is widely used to describe a business collaborator when the relationship isn't really a general partnership, but maybe a corporation, LLC, limited partnership, or something else.

In any event, investors of all kinds have some rights to information and reports. In a general partnership, the right is much broader than in some other business structures, but almost any investor should expect periodic reports and prompt answers to questions. A failure of the person who took the money to respond to an investor of any kind is a sign of serious trouble and almost certainly a violation of a fiduciary duty or a statute, maybe several.

If the nature of the property (e.g., an apartment complex) permits a visual physical inspection, I'd arrange that; also, a complete check of public records (title, tax, secretary of state filings, etc.) for the property and the investment entity.

Please also keep in mind that if you are truly a partner in a general partnership, you are personally liable for partnership debts, even if you were not involved in contracting them and were unaware of their existence.

A lot of questions like yours come from folks who invested in some kind of currency or futures contracts with the promise of high returns after six months or so. If your relationship to the entity you invested in is a contract, a stock or bond, or anything vaguely similar, which is suggested by your use of the term "fund," you might want to contact the police white-collar crimes unit or the district attorney to see whether you are a victim of a known scam or if they feel there are grounds for an investigation. I also wonder if your Florida address suggests a retiree who has been a victim of an investment scam; there are a lot of operations promising high returns from sundry short-to-medium term "investments" (they sometimes say things like "Warren Buffett put $100 million into something like this" without telling you that he was on the "sell" side when they were buying).