My Name Stayed on the Bill
I put €1 into our new limited company. The timber merchant still held a €12,000 bill with my signature on it. Italy had dropped the age rule that kept me off the deed. I asked him to release my sister and me from the old debt. He looked at the company’s €2 capital and said, “No.”
The merchant points to the order we signed the year before.
Bologna, July 2013. Three oak counters stood under canvas in our workshop. The hotel developer had run out of money before taking delivery. The timber merchant let us pay him a little each month. My sister and I had signed his order in our own names last autumn, when I was 36 and too old to join the new simplified company.
My sister came in with a newspaper folded to the business page. “The age limit is gone.” I made her say it twice.
We returned to the notary’s desk and signed a standard deed with our names side by side. We each put in one euro of capital and paid the remaining formation charges. When our company appeared in the register, I ran my thumb over my name on the papers.
I took them to the timber merchant. “Let the company take over the balance,” I said. “Release us from the old order.” He set the new papers beside the invoice bearing both our signatures, then slid that invoice back toward me.
“The company can pay me,” he said. “Your names stay here until I’m paid.”
I pulled the canvas off one counter. “Take these against the balance.” He shook his head. He sold timber, not hotel fittings. He had delivered every board I asked for, and his workers still needed their wages.
I opened the envelope we had been filling for a secondhand panel saw and handed him this month’s payment. He counted it and wrote the remaining balance on our old order.
After he left, my sister hung our company name above the workshop door. I carried the old invoice home in my coat pocket.
Have you ever found that forming a company later could not undo a debt you signed personally?