Family Business Gone Wrong

[fiberman]

Some years ago my (Thai) wife decided to start a car repair business with her brother. The brothers wife owned a piece of land already having a house built where they lived and the garage was built on this land. My wife arranged bank loans for the building and equipment using the land on which the garage was built and land and property belonging to her as collateral.

As a safeguard the land on which the garage was built was transferred to my wife's name the building itself being registered in the brothers name. All of the bank loans were in my wife's name but the brother was responsible for paying the bank loan every month. There was of course no formal business agreement between the 2 of them.

After a few years the repayments to the bank by the brother started to get late or not paid at all and of course my wife having the loans in her name was chased by the bank and it has now got to the stage that the bank is taking her to court. We found out eventually that the brother had got into some serious gambling debts and this was were the money had gone.

We want to sell the garage to repay the bank loans but to do this we have to get him off the property as no one is willing to buy until this happens.He is not willing to even discuss selling the property as he will lose face. What is the legal process to do this and is it possible to sue him to recover the money he has taken to pay off his debts?

Thanking you for any information you can give me.

[Sunbelt Asia]

While there are squatters rights, our lawyers feel that if taken to court they could argue effectively to have the rights of the landowner upheld and the brothers business removed.

[sunbelt][/sunbelt]